Jason Herring
City transit users are seen wearing masks on an LRT platform downtown. Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021.Photo by Brendan Miller/Postmedia
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Modelling from a group of British Columbia researchers predicts Alberta will see a large fourth wave of COVID-19, driven primarily by unvaccinated individuals.
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The projections, which assume Alberta will continue with its current level of public-health restrictions moving forward, predict that by Sept. 15 Alberta will see approximately 4,000 daily cases of the novel coronavirus in unvaccinated people alone. That would be almost twice the level of spread seen at the height of Albertas third wave.
What we see is a fairly large fourth wave in Alberta, which is probably similar to other parts of Canada, said Caroline Colijn, a mathematics professor at Simon Fraser University who helped develop the projections with the B.C. COVID-19 Modelling Group. The independent group of academics has developed modelling throughout the pandemic.
Its just because there are enough unvaccinated people around and transmissibility is high enough with the Delta variant. And we know this because its already transmitting and were already seeing exponential growth.
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The model suggests about 2,000 immunized people will also be infected with COVID-19 each day by mid-September, but that the majority of these cases would never be detected because they are asymptomatic.
As of Friday, 65.2 per cent of all Albertans have at least one shot of vaccine, and 57.4 per cent are fully immunized. That means more than 1.5 million Albertans have yet to receive a single shot, including about 660,000 children under the age of 12, who are not yet eligible for the jab.
Its these Albertans who will experience the bulk of symptomatic COVID-19 infection, Colijn said, with current immunization rates pushing risk of severe illness towards younger groups.
COVID-19 projections for Albertas 4th wave as calculated by the B.C. COVID Modelling Group.Photo by B.C. COVID Modelling Group.
Though children are not as susceptible to severe outcomes from the coronavirus as adults, a significant amount of spread is expected in the group, since unvaccinated children will be in close contact with one another in schools this fall.
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The risk is way lower, but its not zero. Its more like one-in-200 kids with COVID who have needed hospital care. And if you have many thousands of infections, you will still see a good number of hospitalizations, Colijn said.
On Friday, Alberta pumped the brakes on its plans to do away with its remaining COVID-19 containment measures, including testing, tracing and isolation protocols. Those public-health interventions will now remain in place until at least Sept. 27.
In justifying the reversal of course, Alberta chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said reports of severe COVID-19 illness among children in the United States was one factor that led to the delay. She also said the pause was prompted by higher-than-anticipated rates of hospitalizations.
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The B.C. groups modelling projects peak hospital occupancy from COVID-19 at more than 4,000 patients in mid-October. But Colijn said government measures to mitigate virus transmission would likely be put in place to dodge that scenario before it is reached.
Alberta has completed internal modelling around a fourth wave of the pandemic, but has not released it to the public. Hinshaw said during a meeting with Alberta physicians last week this modelling predicts virus spread will peak in early September, and hospitalizations and intensive-care unit admissions will not be significant.
Hinshaw said Friday her office plans to release a distilled version of modelling in the coming days.
jherring@postmedia.com
Twitter: @jasonfherring
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