Dr. Deena Hinshaw admitted to a group of Primary Care Network Doctors yesterday, that she is responsible for Albertans believing that the pandemic is over with how people interpreted her decision to move to an endemic stage.

“I feel very responsible for the narrative that has made it more complicated to try to put additional public health measures in place because whether or not it was my intention what was heard at the end of July was COVID’s over, and we can walk away and ignore it and that has had repercussions.”

In the Zoom call, Alberta’s top doctor recognized the anger and frustration of the healthcare workers in the province as hospitals struggle to keep up with rising cases of COVID-19 patients.

Hinshaw also admitted that the trajectory of the fourth wave is due to the province’s decision to lift all pandemic restrictions at the beginning of July.  “I think that trajectory was set when we removed all the public health restrictions at the beginning of July. And I think if you look at the experiences of all the different provinces across the country, those that have kept in some base level restrictions to manage the interactions and close contacts are the ones that are not seeing the significant impact.”

The COVID-19 numbers continue to rise with another 1,434 new cases being reported on Monday, September 13.

For the past 18 months, we have heard repeatedly that the need to protect the healthcare system is essential and hospitalizations continue to rise at an alarming rate.

There were 19 more patients admitted to the hospital in the past 24 hours with a total of 822 now being treated for the virus.

Fourteen more people are now in ICU units bringing the total in the province to 212.

Ninety-one per cent of the 212 patients in ICU are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.

Another nine Albertans have died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. The total number of deaths in the province are now at 2,471.

There are 18,265 active cases in the province with a positivity rate of 12 per cent.

There are currently 497 active COVID-19 cases in the City of Grande Prairie, with 178 cases in the County of Grande Prairie.

In a tweet on Tuesday, September 14 Hinshaw said, "Viruses are opportunistic and continuously evolve when given a chance to do so. As we have seen over the last few weeks, COVID is gaining strength and we must not let our guard down. Wear a mask, stay home when sick, go for testing when needed, and get vaccinated."