COVID-19 update: Alberta completes over one million virus tests

Minister of Health, Tyler Shandro began the September 28th COVID-19 update by announcing that Alberta has met a testing milestone in reaching over 1,000,000 tests completed.

“Alberta now has conducted more tests per capita than BC, Ontario, and Quebec,” said Shandro.

The Health Minister was very proud of the work the province has done to complete such a massive number of tests. In future, he and the province will be working to improve Alberta’s testing approach to prepare for influenza season.

“We’re working to reduce wait times and speed up test results. We’re also looking at new ways to conduct testing or expand testing further to prepare for the winter ahead,” said Shandro.

Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw participated in the update from her home after getting a sore throat on Friday. The doctor has tested negative for COVID-19 but was taking care in not spreading her illness further.

During the update, she addressed herd immunity in regard to effective treatment of COVID-19 in the population.

“Herd immunity is what happens when there are enough individuals with immunity in a population to prevent an infection from spreading widely,” explained Hinshaw.

“What I have heard sometimes suggested for COVID-19 is that because younger people are generally lower risk in experiencing severe outcomes, we should protect older Albertans but otherwise let the virus spread as quickly and freely as possible so that we can build up a collective immunity to it.”

The doctor does not believe that adopting a herd immunity approach to treating the COVID-19 would be a worthwhile approach. She believes COVID-19 spreads too easily to only subject the younger generations to the virus. It would be difficult to dictate where spread would occur. Additionally, the approach may overwhelm the health care system.

“Death from COVID-19 is not the only severe outcome. In Alberta, over the past seven months, one in every 67 people between the ages of 20 and 39 diagnosed with COVID has needed hospital care. That rises to one in 18 for those aged 40 to 69 and one in four for those aged 70 and over,” said Hinshaw.

Lastly, the doctor noted that it is unknown whether being infected with COVID-19 gives anyone any long-lasting immunity which would ultimately risk the widespread transmission, deaths, and other things for possibly nothing.

She believes the right approach is a collective one where everyone takes steps to minimize transmission as much as possible.