Experts warn Alberta could see a resurgence in COVID-19 cases as winter approaches

Analysts who measure COVID-19 trends say they're concerned about what will happen in Alberta as temperatures cool off and people spend more time inside. 

Dean Karlen, who teaches at the University of Victoria, works with the B.C. COVID-19 Modelling Group, which specializes in rapid response modelling of the pandemic. He notes that last year there was a dramatic rise in infection rates in Alberta during the winter. It caused the province to introduce public health measures at the beginning of December to stem that rapid growth. 

He's worried COVID-19 infection rates — which have been tapering down since mid-September — will grow again as a seasonal effect of people moving indoors with close contacts. 

"A change in behaviour and people moving indoors could be rather dramatic … [other countries] were in the situation that Alberta is in right now, dropping at four or five per cent a day, and then a few weeks later, growing at four or five per cent a day," he said. 

Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor at the University of Alberta, says people still need to be cautious about indoor gatherings.

She also says there are often more outbreaks of diseases in the fall. 

"It's something that we usually expect when school starts and when we start to see the weather turn," she said. 

"The pattern of spread is going to be something that's important to watch, and see if there's any kind of risk signals in terms of types of gatherings that might be the source of outbreaks," she said. 

She added it's important to look at age ranges, as younger groups who are not vaccine eligible yet have a fair amount of transmission. 

"Those things could definitely get aggravated with more indoors activity," she said. 

How to track infection in Alberta? 

In his work for the B.C. COVID-19 Modelling Group, Karlen uses daily case numbers to judge the infection rate in most provinces, but that's not the case in Alberta. 

"We can't use this for Alberta because of such a dramatic change in the testing policies starting near Aug. 1.… Almost the elimination of contact tracing caused a result where the infections being detected were much less following that date," he said. 

At its height, Alberta had 2,500 contact tracers. Now it has fewer than 1,500 — with many of those jobs added in October. 

That means data trackers' ability to use cases to judge whether or not infection rates are growing or declining was eliminated. Instead, they look at hospital admissions in the province to judge the growth and decline of infections. 

"If testing becomes more of a stable policy, then cases will be a very valuable metric to follow into the future."