Alberta’s chief medical officer of health and the president and CEO of Alberta Health Services will be speaking about COVID-19 and the pressures on the health system on Thursday afternoon.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw and Dr. Verna Yiu are scheduled to speak at 3:30 p.m.

This comes one day after Alberta announced a vaccine passport system and additional public health restrictions in response to soaring ICU rates that are pushing the health system to the brink of collapse.

“We may run out of staff and intensive care beds within the next 10 days,” Premier Jason Kenney said Wednesday, as he announced the United Conservative government declared a state of public health emergency.

As of Wednesday, Alberta had 269 patients in intensive care in a system set up for 173. Of the 269 patients in ICUs, 218 had COVID-19 — the vast majority (92.3 per cent) are unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated.

There have been mass cancellations of non-urgent surgeries throughout the province — transplants, some cancer treatments and children’s surgeries, as staff are reassigned to COVID-19 care.

Yiu said the health system has never had so many people in intensive care at one time.

Triage has not been activated yet, she said, but staff are being briefed on rules and processes.

For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/8196066/hinshaw-yiu-alberta-covid-19-hospital-icu-september-16-2021/

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