Editor:
As a group of local Bow Valley physicians, we are writing to express our disappointment in you as our MLA. Your signing of the letter of opposition to recent provincial health restrictions suggests you show no support of the extreme and exhausting efforts the health-care professionals in your constituency are going through as this third wave comes barrelling into our community.
Please do not include us in the “pleas of your constituents” when you refer to those opposing the return to Step 1 lockdown. Your actions are a backhanded slap to our efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19, particularly the new variant strains that are now the target of young healthy 20 to 35-year olds who are a significant demographic of your constituents.
Primary care physicians are continuously adapting protocols and behaviours in the office to support their COVID patients in the community, as well as reaching out to other COVID patients who don’t have a family doctor since roughly a third of COVID patients in the Bow Valley do not have a family doctor.
Through the hard work of the Bow Valley Primary Care Network, in association with Calgary PCN’s, local family physicians reach out and monitor these patients. This involves extra work we are are willing to take on as part of our advocacy for a healthy Bow Valley.
Your actions essentially undermine the work we are doing. The variants of concern have outpaced the immunization roll out at present and reverting to Step 1 lockdown as implemented by your UCP government is the only thing we have in our control presently.
We recognize the financial impact repeated closures have on business – including ours – but “the clear path forward” was not working. This decision made by the UCP under the guidance of Dr. Deena Hinshaw was an essential decision we support.
We are battling a fast spreading variant and not reverting to Stage 1 would overwhelm the physicians, first responders and rural hospitals in the Bow Valley. Your lack of support in this issue gives us very little confidence in your understanding of the consequences of this third wave.
Drs. James Baergen, Elisabeth Brodeur, Nancy Blaney, Mette Hoegh-Petersen, Monica O’Gorman and Dino Smiljic
Bear Street Family Physicians, Banff
