BANFF – With about 20 to 30 Town of Banff employees testing positive for COVID-19, the municipality has limited in-person service to reduce the risk of spreading the highly contagious Omicron variant to essential service staff like firefighters, enforcement personnel and emergency services.
As a result, and with Alberta Health reporting that the Banff and Lake Louise region is the No. 1 COVID-19 hotspot in the region, Town Hall and the fire department building are closed to the public until further notice.
Town Manager Kelly Gibson said the move is prudent contingency planning to ensure the Town maintains uninterrupted essential services to the community, noting all businesses and organizations are being affected by the rapid spike in positive cases in Banff.
“Even though we have a mandatory vaccination policy for our employees, this new COVID variant can cause breakthrough infection, and we have seen about 20 staff members test positive,” he said in a news release.
“The good news is – with our fully vaccinated staff we are not seeing serious illness or, in some cases, any symptoms at all. Our built-in contingency planning and ability to redeploy cross-trained staff means we remain fully capable of providing essential services for Banff.”
The Town’s emergency management team continued to meet over the Christmas holiday break, consulting with Alberta Health officials, local agencies and Banff town council to evaluate how best to support and protect the community.
The municipality is examining contingency planning for essential services because the Omicron variant is able to infect double-vaccinated employees.
The Town is also maintaining Alberta’s work-from-home requirement for all office staff.
Due to the extended closure of the Banff Elementary School, the Town of Banff’s drop-in programs and out-of-school care are cancelled until Jan. 10, 2022, when the facility is expected to reopen.
The Town is exploring options for offering children and family programming outdoors. The Fenlands recreation centre, which is part of the province’s vaccine passport program, remains open. No other Town services have been affected at this time.
Town officials say the municipality is prepared to implement new provincial public health orders, if required, and assesses local options as the situation changes.
“It is critical that visitors and residents take extra measures to help us stop the rapid spread in Banff,” said Banff Mayor Corrie DiManno.
“We know the rise in cases causes anxiety in our community, but we need to stay calm, take care of each other, and follow direction from medical professionals.”
The decision to close Banff Town Hall to the public is being reassessed every few days. All public services normally provided at Town Hall are available online or by phone.
The general Town Hall number is 403-762-1200 during business hours from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed over the noon hour. Services are also available online at banff.ca.
Community Services are available at 403-762-1251 and [email protected]. Other contacts are available at banff.ca/ContactUs.
Critical services will be prioritized to continue operations such as snow and ice control, waste, water and sewage services, and recreation services, along with emergency services.
The Banff region peaked at 186 active cases on Nov. 28, 2020 in the first year of the pandemic, but the statistics presented by the province this week blew that out of the water.
As of Jan. 4, Banff's active case count had doubled within days to 251 active cases, but the true number is much higher given the official number is based on PCR testing only.
The province has emphasized that there are many more cases than are being reported in every region due to the change in testing and reporting. PCR testing through Alberta Health Services has been restricted to high-risk groups only, with other Albertans with COVID symptoms asked to complete at-home rapid antigen testing.
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said daily case numbers have never been an exact count throughout the pandemic.
She said in previous waves of the pandemic, it is believed the province’s PCR testing program captured about one in four cases of COVID-19. In the fourth wave, that changed to about one in six.
“As more individuals who are symptomatic or have been exposed to the virus test themselves at home with rapid antigen tests, that ratio is dropping even more with the Omicron variant,” she said.
Additional monitoring tools are being used to help the province gauge the level of transmission, including leading indicators like wastewater surveillance and syndromic surveillance, and lagging indicators such as serology sampling. Wastewater surveillance data shows Banff is off the charts.
In addition, Hinshaw said the province is still able to monitor severe outcomes due to COVID-19 with no change.
“We also have real-time data emerging around the world, as other countries and other provinces are experiencing the Omicron variant several weeks ahead of us,” she said.
Hinshaw said with more people being infected – and in a very short time – that poses a significant potential threat to Alberta’s health care system.
“Even though it seems that a smaller percentage of cases are requiring acute care, we can expect that with a greater number of people infected, that will soon translate into a greater number of people in hospital,” she said. “How high these numbers will get is still not known.”
Hinshaw said Canada does have the benefit of seeing the variant play out in other countries first.
“What we can learn from them is that while two doses of vaccine still provide good protection against severe outcomes, a third dose improves even more. In addition, a third dose provides much better protection against infection,” she said.
“In countries like the UK and Denmark, where Omicron is spreading widely, their early reports of health system impact indicate that hospital and ICU admissions are not rising as quickly as in previous waves. This is encouraging but not conclusive.”
However, it is still too early to know the full impact of Omicron, even in those other countries.
Hinshaw said it is also important to note that in both the UK and Denmark, the booster programs have reached more than 40 per cent of their population, while it is still around 20 per cent here.
“I urge everyone to get their third dose as soon as possible with whatever vaccine is available to you,” she said.
