Some patients, nurses and doctors are calling for Calgary hospitals to bring in a mask requirement due to concerns about COVID-19.
An Alberta Health Services masking directive, put in place earlier this month to stem transmission, allows individual sites to adopt masking in consultation with health zone leaders and the local medical officer of health.
And while facilities in Edmonton, and surrounding areas, as well as Red Deer have returned to masking, Calgary hospitals have not.
“I don’t necessarily feel safe right now in hospitals. And yet this is where I have to come to get my life-saving treatment,” said Natalie Kwadrans, a Calgary mother of two who has terminal cancer.
On Monday, she masked up and went to the Tom Baker Cancer Centre for the treatment she receives there every three weeks.
“COVID could kill me,” she said, noting she saw very few staff and patients wearing masks.
“There are high risk and vulnerable patients, such as myself … sitting here at the Tom Baker, being exposed to potential COVID because people around me, including the staff, aren’t masked.”
The following Alberta health-care facilities have already implemented the AHS masking directive:
- Royal Alexandra Hospital.
- University of Alberta Hospital.
- Stollery Children’s Hospital.
- Misericordia Community Hospital.
- Grey Nuns Community Hospital.
- Alberta Hospital Edmonton.
- Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital.
- Cross Cancer Institute (masking for workers but patient/visitor requirement up to staff).
- Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
- Central Alberta Cancer Centre.
AHS added the following sites to the list on Tuesday afternoon:
- Devon General Hospital
- Fort Saskatchewan Community Hospital.
- Northeast Community Health Centre.
- Leduc Community Hospital.
- Strathcona Community Hospital.
- Westview Health Centre.
Nurses want masking across the province
The United Nurses of Alberta said it’s time Alberta put a masking requirement in place in all hospitals.
“We just need to take a precautionary … approach and make sure that we’re being proactive,” said Cameron Westhead, second vice-president with the union.
“If we wait too long and react after the fact, we often have to introduce more dramatic measures.”
He said the union is hearing from concerned nurses.
“They’re looking for leadership, essentially. They want people who do have the data to make a decision,” he said.
“It doesn’t really matter where you live, it’s protection that everybody deserves to have taken. So we’re encouraging that AHS and other health-care employers would adopt a masking mandate across the province.”
Some doctors are calling for this, too.
“We’re not protecting our patients. We’re not protecting our health-care workers,” said Dr. Joe Vipond, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Calgary and co-founder of Protect our Province Alberta.
“Why does a patient in Edmonton get to have a safer health-care setting than a patient in Calgary?”
Vipond said it’s unclear to him exactly how the decisions are being made, noting he’s asked to meet with AHS leaders to discuss the issue.
“They haven’t really explicitly laid out why one place is allowed to put in masking when other places are not.”
AHS watching situation
Alberta Health Services said the situation is being monitored.
It pointed to its acute care outbreak report showing, as of Tuesday morning, that Calgary had far fewer COVID outbreaks than Edmonton.
“Decisions whether or not to implement the directive are based on several factors, including the rate of hospitalizations, number of outbreaks, [bed] occupancy, test positivity and situational context,” spokesperson Kerry Williamson said in a statement.
The directive itself cites “the risk of service disruption, capacity and staffing challenges” as some of factors considered within “situational context.”
The process involves hospital leaders consulting with those in charge at the zone level. The directive notes a risk assessment is to be done in collaboration with the zone medical officer of health.
It says masking should be put in place when “COVID-19 is or is expected to imminently pose a significant risk to health outcomes for patient populations and/or have a substantial negative impact on capacity at the AHS facility.”
Dr. Arun Abbi, president of the emergency medicine section with the Alberta Medical Association, said he, too, would like to see AHS implement the masking directive in Calgary.
“Once an outbreak happens, then all of the sudden your capacity drops another five or 10 per cent. And it takes three or four weeks to recover from that. And we’re already overcapacity,” he said.
CBC News has asked AHS what specific thresholds are in place to trigger the masking directive, but it had not answered that question at publication time.
The positivity rate in the Calgary zone is now 21 per cent, behind the south zone (25.5 per cent) and central zone (21.5 per cent). Edmonton is sitting at 15.8 per cent.
“Masking is just one strategy out of a package of preventive measures,” said Williamson.
“As always, all staff are encouraged to mask, stay home when ill and to continue to practise diligent hand hygiene as part of ongoing efforts to keep patients, families and each other safe and healthy.”
In most facilities that have enacted the directive, staff are required to mask in all patient-care areas and common areas such as hallways and cafeterias. Patients and visitors are required to mask only in ERs as well as labour and delivery areas.
At the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, it’s up to staff to decide where patients and visitors should mask up, the AHS website says.