Alberta surgery backlog has stabilized following latest COVID outbreak: health minister
Posted Dec 10, 2021 9:38 am.
Alberta’s health minister says the province’s backlog of surgeries has stabilized and the government will focus on reducing it over the coming months.
Jason Copping says the waitlist stood at 68,000 cases before the pandemic began and has been rising and falling as waves of COVID-19 have swept through.
He says the backlog has settled at 81,600, and he will work with Alberta Health Services to shave that figure down to the original 68,000 by the middle of next year.
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Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government has been sharply criticized for easing public health restrictions in the summer just as the Delta variant ramped up.
By September, hospitals had been pushed to the brink by soaring caseloads.
That forced Alberta Health Services to redeploy medical staff to deal with the health crisis, resulting in thousands of scheduled surgeries being cancelled.
