Alberta Will Be Releasing Its Plan To End 'Damaging' COVID-19 Restrictions This Week

Alberta will be releasing a plan to lift COVID-19 restrictions including the province's vaccine passport system this week.

In a live Facebook address on Thursday, February 3, Premier Jason Kenney described the restrictions as "damaging" and said he shares the frustrations of Albertans whose lives have been disrupted over the past two years.

"After two years of this, we simply cannot continue to rely on the blunt instrument of damaging restrictions as a primary tool to cope with a disease that will likely be with us for the rest of our lives," he said. "We must find a way to get our lives back to normal."

In its plan, which Kenney says will be announced early next week, the province will start by ending its restrictions exemption program (REP), in which businesses must require patrons to show proof of vaccination or a negative test result.

Regarding other public health measures, a "simple, phased plan" to remove almost all of the restrictions will be laid out and can be implemented as long as the province sees a trend of declining pressure on hospitals.

"With much higher levels of vaccination and much lower levels of preventing infection from vaccines months ago, the rationale for the proof of vaccination programs like Alberta's REP is not as strong today as when we introduced it in September. As COVID changes our response to it must change as well," Kenney said.

In response to people who say that it is too soon to ease restrictions in Alberta, Kenney said it is "all too risky."

"Between 1918 and 1920, about 50 million people around the world died from the Spanish flu pandemic," he said. "Most of the world, including Alberta, you can look it up in the history books, we all put in place public health restrictions very similar to those that we've had in place in our province on and off over the past couple of years.

"But with growing population immunity and less and less lethal variants, the Spanish Flu eventually became endemic. In fact, viral descendants of this Spanish flu continue to circulate and infect us today. But our ancestors learned to live with it, just as we must and will learn to live with COVID-19."