Albertans should expect the measures put in place to help stop the spread of COVID-19 to be in place for some time.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw says she doesn't anticipate a relax in the measures any time soon.

"What we're doing by these measures is we're slowing the spread of the virus, which is important because we know that as the virus spreads, there will be a certain percentage of those who get it who end up in the hospital or ICU," says Hinshaw. "And if we allow it to spread widely, it would overwhelm our health system and we'd end up in a situation like we've seen in other countries where there are too many people to receive adequate care and people end up dying, not just from COVID, but from other diseases that may need hospital care when all the hospital beds are full with COVID."

Hinshaw says slowing the spread will allow time to get better research on potential treatments, a vaccine, and build the capacity for testing and contact tracing.

"Even if and when we do ease those restrictions, people do need to be prepared for the fact that we will continue to be isolating those who have COVID, isolating close contacts of those individuals. That measure will be in place for many months," says Hinshaw. "But the other society-wide restrictions, I anticipate again that we will likely need to have those in place for some months when we look at the spread of this, because if we start to ease them off, we will see spread start to increase again."

Hinshaw says she knows it's challenging but that these measures are all we have to protect each other.

When it comes to more aggressive measures, like all Albertans being ordered to shelter in place, Hinshaw says the advice from officials so far is quite close to that anyway.

"Most of our recommendations have already made it clear that people should stay away from others as much as possible," says Hinshaw.

As for closing provincial borders, the measures don't go that far currently, but Hinshaw is advising against travel and to stay as close to home as possible.

"At this time, don't travel if you don't have to outside of the province," says Hinshaw. "In fact, don't travel if you don't have to even within the province. So a lot of these pieces are in place as recommendations and we do continue to assess the situation with respect to whether or not any more aggressive measures may be required."

As of April 2, there are 968 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Alberta. Hinshaw warns that what we are seeing now in terms of total numbers isn't the peak.

The province plans to release modelling numbers next week.

"If we look at the scenarios and projections of what our infection rate might be, I think it really helps people understand the importance of the measures that we're taking," says Hinshaw.

Visit the COVID-19 information page for updates.