Thread by @laurby

Premier Jason Kenney is here at the federal building to give an update on Covid today. I’m told Hinshaw came by earlier but she’s not in the room now. #abhealth #covid19ab #ableg #yeg

Kenney says it doesn’t look like we had a Thanksgiving spike. He’s talking a bit about vaccines — we’re at 87.2% of first doses and 80.6% who had both.

He says while it’s important for everyone to get the jab some more vulnerable groups need them more so that’s why they went first and got booster shots.

NEW: Starting Monday more people can get a booster — everyone ages 70+ and First Nations/Métis 18+, can get a booster 6 months after their last shot. #abhealth #covid19ab #yeg

NEW: Health-care workers with direct patient contact who got their 2nd shot less than 8 weeks from their first, and everyone who had Astra-Zeneca can get boosters too. #abheath #yeg #covid19ab

NEW: Kenney says general public under 70 won’t be getting the booster until December. #abhealth #covid19ab #yeg

Health Minister Jason Copping is giving more details now.

Anyone who got the Janssen vax outside of Canada are also part of this group (since it’s for people who got viral vector vaccines).

Copping says if you aren’t in these groups don’t worry, you will have your turn.

Copping said that cancer surgeries aren’t being postponed any longer because of Covid and that he’s working to get them up to capacity on the other surgeries.

Okay Hinshaw is here! She’s starting with info on health records. She said there’s cases where people have got a shot but don’t have a record of it.

AHS can’t accept verbal history, so if you don’t have paperwork you should get it again. It’s not specific to COVID but standard for all immunization records.

Hinshaw’s Covid update: 487 new cases. Positivity about 4.8% after about 10.3K tests. Cases in kids going down. 184 school outbreaks. 697 in hospital, 155 in ICU. 14 more deaths.

Hinshaw: “We are past the peak of the fourth wave thanks to targeted health measures we have in place and rising immunization rates as more eligible Albertans choose this combination” and it’s helping reduce demand for acute & critical care.

Question time! Graham Thompson with iPolitics is asking the premier about how he seemed to blame Dr. Hinshaw for not taking action.

Kenney says he thinks it’s a completely ridiculous construal of what he said. He said he received advice and takes it seriously and acts quickly when he gets it.

Kenney said he thinks the public expects transparency. He said in August when health officials saw that there wasn’t that decoupling of cases/hospitalizations they reached out. He said they got advice to suspend the roll out of some measures

He said when they saw the situation deterioration more recommendations came forward. And those resulted in Sept. 3 announced

Hinshaw asked for her take on the timeline that the Premier talked about

Hinshaw says she can’t talk about specific recommendations and she had to get advice on what she says since she took an oath about what happens in cabinet committees

.@Jantafrench asks about allegations against Dreeshen, and who was investigating. Kenney says deputy chief of staff normally handles those things

She also asked why he’s still in the cabinet. (Sorry I missed the answer)

Audrey with CBC asked if he feels like he opened a can of worms with the constitutional question on equalization and comments from Blanchette earlier. Kenney said he likes Alberta bashing, he’s disappointed some leaders are trying to divide.

He says politicians like him attacking Alberta is supporting dictatorships like Putin in Russia. Energy will be produced and sold by Russia, Iran etc … this is bad for human rights

I’m next: first asking health minister Copping what happened to the wastewater testing that was going to roll out across the province and what does it show? Was that meant to replace case testing and so you cancelled that now that you brought it back?

Copping: they recently signed an updated agreement with U of Calgary. And they’re working on it

I asked Hinshaw again to talk about her decisions this summer on Covid in interest of transparency.

She said they did assume cases would go up but ICU hospitalizations. Said they made preparations in case cases + hospitalizations started going up they made some recommendations to put forward to the government.

Hinshaw says if we moved too quick on cases going up and it wasn’t impacting hospitalizations because there was going to be indirect impacts on the public. When they realized decoupling wasn’t happening (cases+hospitalizations did go up) they moved quickly to give recommendations

(Missed a couple questions) Question from David Staples now: are you concerned laying off unvaccinated people?

(Concerned about employers doing that)

Kenney says it’s in the interest of some employers to make sure vaccines are high. Like with AHS and the duty if care. Kenney mentions there is the option to do regular negative tests

Kenney says some major employers with mandatory vaccine policies also talk about how they have an ethical and legal responsibility to protect workers from the disease

Staples asks about immunity with prior infection. Kenney says when they brought in the vaxport he asked whether or not that was an option. He thinks only 1-2 countries have the prior infection option, but he’s asked Alberta Health to look at this as an option.

Kenney says they had to move quickly in September so they determined the restriction exemption program was the best at the time, and they couldn’t get that kind of complex program up quick enough. Also that kind of protection wanes over time so you need a testing regime for that.

Kenney says he understands the point that if they have immunity from a prior infection, and we recognize that in our modelling, in public health rules (like in isolation rules for people infected previously). But ultimately, the most effective is natural immunity PLUS vaccination