News Release

AHS DATA SHOWS ICUs OVERRUN IN COMING DAYS

 
CALGARY – Alberta Health Services is forecasting that hospitals will not have enough intensive care beds to care for the critically sick and injured in the coming days.
 
The AHS data shows forecasted patients numbers passing current surge ICU capacity in nine days, and past maximum capacity in 13 days. Yesterday, AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu told Albertans that they were issuing a call to other provinces to send qualified staff to Alberta, and accept patients transported out of Alberta to free up space.
 
“These AHS projections are based on an ICU admission rate that’s lower than what we’ve seen in the past few days,” said NDP Leader Rachel Notley. “And it’s very sobering to look at the AHS projections into the first week of October that show our hospitals without dozens of beds needed to care for Albertans whose lives hang in the balance. I am truly sick at heart to think of vulnerable Albertans being taken so far from home and so far from their families, but now we must ask for the help of other Canadian provinces, those with governments who took a more responsible approach to re-opening.
 
“In Alberta, the UCP government plans to continue to tell people they have to put off critical surgeries on things like brain tumours, procedures to replace heart valves, and organ transplants, to name a few. These people who can’t access the hospitals right now are both vaccinated and unvaccinated and they have people who love them, who are vaccinated and unvaccinated.
 
“All of us need to put these people front of mind and do everything we can to get them back into hospitals.”
 
In a press conference yesterday, Jason Kenney refused to apologize for his rushed “Open for Summer” plan, despite the Chief Medical Officer of Health admitting that it set the stage for a devastating fourth wave and a public health emergency.
 
“I am incredibly frustrated because this emergency was completely avoidable. There was evidence that showed this crisis was brewing as early as July, but Jason Kenney and the UCP did nothing,” Notley said.
 
In fact, when many Albertans were expecting more caution, the UCP scheduled a teardown for Alberta’s Test-Trace-Isolate system. As late as September 3rd, Kenney refused to heed calls from the Opposition, business leaders, municipal leaders, and healthcare leaders to introduce mandatory vaccine passports.
 
“Jason Kenney and the UCP were unforgivably late to act and now we are in a deadly crisis. If we cannot mobilize sufficient help from our fellow Canadians, the possibility that healthcare workers will have to make traumatic decisions about who lives and who dies, is quite real,” Notley said.
 
“I call on every Albertan to do their part to avert this catastrophe. Please, however angry you may be at this UCP government, abide by the public health orders announced yesterday. Limit the spread of COVID and save lives. Limit the spread of COVID and spare your friends and neighbours who work in our hospitals from having to make a decision that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”