INNISFAIL – Mayor Jim Romane wants the provincial government to give rural centres a break on indoor social gatherings that would allow greater flexibility to have more people in homes.
Since Dec. 8, Alberta’s COVID-19 restrictions have prohibited all public and private indoor social gatherings to only household members. People who live alone can have up to two close contacts.
Under the province's current four-step benchmark COVID recovery strategy, restrictions on indoor social gatherings will not be eased until Step 3 when the province’s total daily pandemic hospitalizations are under 300.
Romane, who made a pitch to town council on the indoor social gathering issue on Feb. 1, said he believes current social gathering restriction could remain in place until the fall.
“I am getting feedback from the adult side of the community who are really feeling the lock-up sensation of this whole thing and they can’t even have someone over for coffee,” said Romane, who recently wrote Premier Jason Kenney a letter on behalf of council requesting flexibility on COVID restrictions for small businesses. The mayor added he will be sending Kenney a new letter about the indoor social gathering restriction.
“It’s not so bad now with this kind of weather but you just wait until it gets nice out. People will get sick and tired being locked into their yards for a year.”
He also told council he believes COVID numbers are not going below 400 until the province’s vaccination program is more widespread and makes a significant impact.
“I don’t think it is going to come down that easily. I think we would be fortunate to see it get better than it is now in the next three of four months, until the vaccination. We are not even going to see a vaccination program that will have an impact until April.”
Like the tone and content in his previous letter to Kenney, Romane said the province should be looking at geographical locations and not “paint the entire province with the same paint brush” with all COVID restrictions, like social distancing.
“(Rural) areas that have a proven track record and better results should be recognized for it, and shouldn’t be held to the same standards as the big urban centres that don’t have those kind of (standards),” he said.
“The rural areas have very low (COVID) rates. It is only the big urban centres where the problems are, with the extra load on the hospitals. The rural centres I think are more dedicated to being careful.”
However, Romane’s comments to council on Feb. 1 were met with caution from Coun. Jean Barclay, who countered the town ought to keep in mind the provincial COVID plan is in place to protect the health-care system.
“It wasn’t very many weeks ago when Red Deer was bulging at the seams, and it doesn’t take very much to get there again,” said Barclay, noting Innisfail and south Red Deer County have seen COVID cases recently drop from 51 to about 16.
“So, these measures do work and if people comply, they will work even better. We are going to see more vaccine roll out without question and that is going to take some time but I think we really have to keep in mind even in our own community in Central Alberta that we have to be mindful of hospitalization rates and impacts on ICU and health-care staff and what it is doing to other parts of the health-care system.
"People are having surgeries cancelled because there is no room for them. We have to keep working at this together collectively, and I hope that is the message coming out of the Town of Innisfail.”
