Vaccines paired with restrictions could help contain fourth wave of COVID-19: epidemiologist

CALGARY — Alberta is seeing COVID-19 numbers that haven’t been seen in a few months, and some experts are now calling this the fourth wave.

But what really is the difference between this wave and previous ones?

The biggest factor this time around is the number of people that are vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.

Currently, 77.2 per cent of eligible Albertans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine — while 68.5 per cent are fully vaccinated.

One epidemiologist says while vaccines will lower the number of infections, they won’t fully eradicate them.

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“People are expecting no infections with vaccines and that’s not the way it works. All I can say is, it’s not like building a brick wall around your house, giving you a vaccine, it’s more like giving you a fire extinguisher that you didn’t have before, so if there’s a small fire in your house, you can put it out quickly,” said Dr. Daniel Gregson.

Gregson says moving forward, there are two ways to restrict things from getting worse.

“One is to get everyone vaccinated and the other one is to have restrictions,” he said. “We know what works in terms of restrictions, masking is very effective, and distancing is very effective.”

Alberta Health data shows the majority of Albertans facing severe outcomes related to COVID-19 are unvaccinated or only partially protected.

As of Friday afternoon, there are 221 people are in hospital with COVID-19, 176 of which are unvaccinated. While 45 of the 48 people in the ICU have also not been fully protected.