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including right now stay at home orders curfews kept schools closed and suspended most businesses from operating none of those things have happened here are in alberta in part because we know that our economy has been hit harder than elsewhere and we were already experiencing a pre-covered mental health crisis in our province we also have to maintain broad public support for and compliance with public health guidelines and restrictions so in trying to strike this balance it is important that we show albertans that there is a path forward that if we continue to do collectively the right things bending that curve down further and further reducing pressure on our hospitals that we can gradually relax public health restrictions but this must be done carefully slowly and in a way that is driven not by opinions but by data and that is what i want to focus on now alberta's path forward will be a stepped approach to easing restrictions based on hospitalization benchmarks total hospitalizations both for uh icu and general acute care is the key metric that will guide how and when we ease public health measures we chose hospitalizations because it's a clear indicator of healthcare capacity it's also a lagging indicator indicator which means it gives us a better idea of how relaxations affect the health care system daily case numbers and case growth are leading metrics and better reflect recent transmission trends daily case numbers and growth will be used to guide decisions around the need to pause further relaxations or potentially to increase restrictions if the virus once again poses a growing threat and let me pause here to make an absolutely clear point if cases of covet 19 surge again if we start moving once again towards exponential growth like we saw in uh november december uh and if somehow one of these new uh viral variants takes hold in our community and begins to spread at rates seen in some other parts of the world we will have to impose stronger restrictions again hospitalizations will be used to guide decisions around easing restrictions when a hospitalization benchmark is reached decisions will be considered for moving to the next step of relaxing restrictions to be clear the hospitalized hospitalization benchmarks will be the primary factor but we'll obviously have to look at whether we're back into a growth of the virus once we move once we move into the that step we will reevaluate hospitalizations three weeks later i'll have more detail on the three week period later on if by that time hospitalizations have fallen even further to the next benchmark we'll consider moving into that next step so i'm now going to walk you through the plan that we have developed and based on the advice of our public health experts one that sets out specific med benchmarks to drive each stage as we walk through the steps in our path forward it is important to understand that there will be a progression of easing that occurs at each step some degree of restrictions will still apply to all activities within each step as of today we are in what we are calling early steps schools have returned to in-person class outdoor social gatherings of up to 10 people are allowed personal and wellness services are open for appointment only and funeral service attendance is now capped uh at 20 people up from 10. and let me pause there to just emphasize the importance of our decision uh made in december uh to reopen the schools sometime at the beginning of the middle of january because that's 720 000 people who are learning together and working together that's hundreds of thousands of families who have the support of those schools the mental health support the kids get at those schools a critically important part of our step forward towards reopening step one will include some easing of restrictions related to school related to the functioning of schools including indoor and outdoor children sports and performance and easing of some restrictions related to indoor fitness for adults will also allow for some dine-in options for restaurants cafes and pubs now these activities will still be bound by clear limitations for example there will be physical distancing requirements activity restrictions group size limitations and masking amongst other mandatory measures and let me pause there to say that with respect to step one we have now uh in the last two or three days achieved a the threshold of moving below 600 hospitalizations and the last step towards relaxation of public health measures was on january the 18th and so we are comfortable to proceed with this step one on monday february the 4th now some people might say why aren't you doing this immediately i reiterate that we must do this in a careful gradual stepped approach why so we can assess the impact the full impact of each stage of relaxations what business people tell us is the last thing they want is a roller coaster they don't want the so-called yoyo effect of opening and closings that's why we have to be careful and deliberate and allow for the full uh 21 days to elapse between measures so we will be taking the step one measures on monday february the 8th step 2 would proceed only after we see the weekly average for hospitalizations drop below 450 easing some restrictions for retail community halls banquet halls hotels and conference centers and there will be some further easing of restrictions on children's sports and performance activities as well as indoor fitness and i repeat at least three weeks must elapse between two steps to allow us to assess the impact of gradual easing when we reach a hospitalization number of 300 coveted patients uh things will open up a bit more at stage three easing of restrictions related to places of worship will be considered as well as consideration for limited reopening of museums art galleries libraries casinos indoor seated events movie theaters and bingo halls uh we'll also consistent pardon me consider at that point indoor social gatherings with limitations all of course with mandatory health measures in place to limit the risk of viral uh transmission uh through each of these activities step four could potentially see us back to a similar position as we were in last summer in summer of 2020 there will be restrictions but significantly more options for albertans and alberta businesses but we won't start considering easing these categories until we see hospitalization numbers of under 150 at this point easing would be considered for a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities many of which have been greatly missed by albertans festivals weddings funeral receptions wedding and funeral receptions i should say indoor concerts trade shows and rodeos are amongst the possibilities of some easing of restrictions at that fourth stage again all will be subject to specific health measures to ensure con that we continue uh to proceed safely but say stage four brings us back to within what many would consider to be normal these steps represent the ideal situation of continuous decline in hospitalizations and that's based on continued adherence by all of us to existing public health measures but as i stated earlier there are factors that could severely curtail our progress which is why we are taking a gradual step approach we also know that as measures are eased there will be the risk of greater community spread and case growth and that is to be expected as more contacts between people are made and more people are participating in different kinds of activities that is why moving from one step to another will not be done automatically once once a benchmark is reached if after three weeks the numbers are in the range of the next benchmark for hospitalizations decisions will be made to move to the next step although we are using hospitalizations as our metric to ease measures we will also pay and this is very important we'll pay constant attention to leading indicators like uh new cases active cases the positivity rate and the r or the reproductive value these leading indicators are not what will provide more immediate red flags uh expect me they will provide i should say immediate red flags that will tell us if we should stop regroup and potentially tighten restrictions this is a careful and balanced approach to protect both lives and livelihoods while balancing physical mental and emotional health concerns and protecting our health care system at each stat we'll provide albertans organizations service providers and businesses with the details for every measure that is eased we know alberta businesses have been hit hard and we're thankful for their continued efforts and patience uh our minister for jobs economy and innovation doug schweitzer will be making further announcements about increased business supports uh in coming days and based on impact feedback back that we're getting i should say from alberta businesses uh we recently did expand the eligibility of the small and medium enterprise relaunch grant to include businesses that had started between march thursday and october 31st of last year so far this funding has helped thousands of businesses and the program will continue to accept applications we've moved quickly to more than uh 40 processed more than 45 000 grant payments totaling more than 315 million dollars in support in addition to our abatements on taxes on wcb premiums um our participation in the federal rent assistance program and of course we remind business owners that there are other supports including the uh wage subsidy program we hope that opening further activities as part of step one on february 8th will be another boost to su to some alberta small businesses such as as restaurants and personal trainers for example we've made significant progress and we cannot lose sight of that the more we see our numbers go down the the clearer our path forward becomes but let's not let our guard down and let's keep working hard to get those hospitalization numbers down so that we can stand here sooner than later and announce uh more good news but let me just pause to say this uh that folks we are not through the end of this yet uh unfortunately because of the constraints on vaccine supplies it will be some time into uh 2021 before we see the impact of vaccines uh having a real uh positive effect on hospitalizations and covet related fatalities with the new variants that are circulating around the world that are far more contagious we must be actually more cautious in some respects than we have been before so please do not take today's announcement as a kind of uh encouragement just to go out there and and return to normal patterns of socializing and social interaction because if we make that mistake what will happen is we'll lose the progress that we've made to date we'll start uh piling up more pressure on our hospitals again we'll start threatening the ultimate capacity of that system we'll have to start canceling surgeries and non-urgent care again and then unfortunately we would have to bring in additional restrictions again avoiding that fate is in all of our hands collectively and with that i'd like to thank you and turn it over to dr hinshaw for her daily update [Music] thank you premier and good afternoon everyone over the last 24 hours we have identified 543 new cases of covid19 and completed about 11 600 tests our positivity rate currently stands at about 4.5 percent there are currently active alerts or outbreaks in 291 schools or about 12 percent of the schools in the province currently these schools have a combined total of 607 cases there are 594 people in hospital including 110 in the icu sadly 14 new deaths were reported to alberta health in the last 24 hours while the number of coveted fatalities are trending downward every death is a tragedy to those who love them my thoughts are with anyone mourning the loss of someone whether from covet 19 or any other cause we have also identified 12 more cases of variant covid19 in alberta we have found 31 cases in total of the strain first identified in the uk and six total cases of the strain first identified in south africa of these 37 cases all but three are linked to travel these three are all from the same household one of whom is the case unrelated to travel which i referenced on monday ahs is working hard to prevent spread and ensure that any close contacts of all cases are isolated and getting tested we still have no evidence of further spread in the community at this time these cases however are another reminder of why we must be cautious as we work to find the right balance of minimizing the impact of covid on our health system while keeping in place only the public health measures we need i know many albertans are keen to return to the activities they love and have missed dearly over the last number of weeks this path forward shows us what we need to achieve together to be able to do that safely we're taking this approach to ensure that we are not risking hospital capacity for albertans when they need it most this is vital to ensuring that expert care and services are available for all albertans when they need it regardless of whether it's from covid a car crash or any other medical emergency we all have a role to play in the reduction of covid19 cases in the province most important of all is to continue to follow the public health orders in place in detail and in spirit our declining numbers through january prove how effective the measures can be when albertans work together to protect each other and our healthcare system we can further slow the spread of covid19 and protect ourselves from the risk of variants by continuing to limit as many in-person interactions as possible in every facet of our day-to-day lives if each of us continue to find ways to replace these in-person interactions with other alternatives together we will further reduce our case counts which help to relieve pressure on our health care system we will also help prevent any spread of the new variants of concern in our province as i've said before none of us can do this alone it takes all albertans working together to combat covid19 we've shown before the collective power we have let's harness that power once again to save lives and help us safely ease restrictions thank you and i'll turn it over to minister chandra for some remarks thank you dr hinshaw and thank you premier good afternoon everyone i'd like to start off by saying that i'm proud to say that alberta has now administered over 104 000 doses of the cova 19 vaccines more than 14 000 people as well are now fully immunized that means they've received both of the the doses and like the rest of canada we're using two vaccines just to remind everyone that there's one from pfizer and another one from moderna and as i mentioned yesterday federal officials informed us that we will be receiving 63 000 fewer doses of the pfizer vaccine during the first quarter or q1 of this calendar year today the news got worse when moderna announced that it will be delaying up to 25 percent of next month's shipments to canada so once again our country and our province is not a priority and so what does that mean for us alberta health was advised this morning that next week's shipment of modern vaccines has been cut we have been expecting to receive twenty four thousand six hundred doses instead we'll be getting eighteen thousand eight hundred doses or five thousand eight hundred doses fewer than what we had expected so that's a twenty three and a half percent reduction and it means that almost six thousand seniors and other health care workers will not be getting those vaccines in the amount of time that we were expecting to be able to provide it to them what's more alarming is that we've been told that all modernist shipments for february and march are being reassessed while we wait for decisions from moderna this means it's impossible to say exactly how much modern vaccine alberta will be receiving in the weeks and as well as the the months ahead we're currently assessing the impact that these reductions will have on our ability here in alberta to provide second doses or when we'll be able to start offering first doses again but that's hard to do when the delivery schedule is filled with question marks a lot will depend on how much vaccine actually arrives in alberta during the the next month so at this point i know that many albertans are frustrated to hear about cuts to vaccine shipments day after day let me say we are too the news from ottawa is is going from bad to worse the reality is our plans depend on the supply that we receive from the federal government and the numbers are changing every day there is absolutely no reason that canada should be 20th in the world for vaccine doses administered we should not be trailing so many other countries throughout the world over the weekend we'll continue working with the federal government we'll keep calling on them to come up with a plan of action to solve this we've heard promises to make phone calls and we've heard excuses what we haven't heard is and what we desperately need is a clear national strategy to improve vaccine supply as soon as possible i know this isn't about politics it's about leadership it's about delivering and delivering help when it's needed the most we need more doses and we need it now people want to hear who's getting the vaccine and they want to hear about when it's going to happen and we want to tell them but we can't make plans for vaccines that we don't have we can't make lists of who will get the vaccine a month from now or two months from now when we don't even have a delivery schedule that we can rely upon in the meantime once again i'll give albertans the two promises that i can give first we will keep using every vial that we get with the smallest amount of waste that we possibly can regardless of whether the label says six doses or five and regardless of what syringe we need to use it and the second is we'll keep rolling the vaccines out to the people who need it the most as fast as the federal government can get them to us uh thank you very much and we'll we're happy to take questions christine so we'll open it up to the phone lines now uh just so we can get it to as many questions as possible we ask that you uh limit yourself to one question operator can you please put through the first caller first question is from kelly kreiderman with the globe and mail go ahead kelly hi there thank you for taking my question i am um wondering if the message today that things can start to open one week from now doesn't fit with the messages that we have heard from minister chandra and dr hinshaw that the restrictions are working that the variant poses a great unknown risk and that the province needs to proceed with caution we've seen the the federal government um do further off dams in terms of travel this week how does this fit with the trends that we're seeing about the variant sure i'll i'll start off i'll say this that the important message for everyone to hear is that there's there's i guess two different things there's about stepping up and stepping down measures and we need to be clear to be able to provide people a road map for a path forward and how and when we as a province can do it so what we're doing right now is providing people with that road map about how it can happen and it would happen using hospitalizations as that indicator now that is separate from if we ever do see increases in in our daily um case counts and see those numbers increasing then of course we're going to continue as we have throughout the pandemic to work with our public health officials and dr hinshaw's office to be able to look at that data and see what measures might ever be required for us to to be able to step up measures again throughout the rest of this pandemic uh premier you wanted to supplement that yes sorry thanks kelly i would just add that we're taking a very gradual step-by-step approach here the some of the things that we are gradually relaxing are already available for the public in our neighboring provinces of british columbia and saskatchewan uh british columbia that has had success in maintaining low levels of hospitalization and cases relative to most of canada and we'll monitor these very closely but kelly we as we've said from the beginning we are trying in this province uh to manage risk and to balance many different very important uh pressures and considerations and uh one of those is the enormous there's a mental health crisis in this province that has been deepened and worsened by the economic damage of the past uh 10 months and some of that is is due to restrictions uh to uh business owners small business owners that they may be shut indefinitely um to give them no path or sense of hope uh leads to even greater despair will uh you know to quote governor cuomo new york recently uh if we don't begin reopening some of these businesses there won't be some of these businesses to reopen and so uh we have to give i think a measured path that is safe but also presents a sense of hope uh that people can recover um and um and that there are outlets as well for people to improve their mental and a physical mental and emotional health ex like increased opportunities for physical activity uh in schools and and for adults uh all with very uh narrow guidelines so i'll remind you on the hospice on the uh uh in dining service at restaurants this would be limited uh to six people from one household or an individual and is at maximum of two of their their two identified closed contacts uh and that's really the key thing the central thing in all of this is that as much as pos possible people stick to their household uh cohort group and of course all of the other uh layers of protection exist around this contact list for people visiting restaurants uh distancing between tables frequent sanitation mask wearing and and all of those other measures and i don't know perhaps dr hinshaw would like to comment as well thank you premier i would just reinforce that last statement which is that although there are some sectors that as of february 8th as long as our hospitalizations continue to trend downward and our cases continue to trend downward we will be able to start slowly opening but that there are restrictions still in place in those particular sectors and i think the consistent call to action is to say to albertans that in order to be able to continue this slow stepwise approach we all need to be very vigilant in every single activity we undertake to make sure that we're following all of those public health measures and that ideally as we move forward we're able to again strike that right balance between having a slow gradual monitored and safe approach while at the same time if we do see cases start to rise again the ability to move backward if we have to operator can you please put through the next caller next is ashley joanna with postmedia edmonton go ahead ashley hi good afternoon this is a question for the premiere and possibly dr henshaw she has other things she'd like to add um there's a growing movement of people who are knowingly and willfully ignoring restrictions at this point the fines that ahs stands out don't appear to be a deterrent and in at least one case municipal officials have expressed support for businesses breaking the rules i i wonder what you think should be done in the cases where people are knowingly not following the rules and are we at a stage where you would support more strict measures for people who don't follow the rules that are in place thank you for the good question let me take the first shot at that one so our approach has always been to begin with education uh and then to work with people for compliance but only to use enforcement as a last resort if education and compliance don't work and it is regrettable to see that some people are in a very deliberate way thumbing their nose at the law and in so doing at our public health and when they do it they are thumbing their nose at the icu nurses who have been working around the clock what they're doing is saying that that their uh personal wishes outweigh the need to protect our health care system because if it's all right for one business or individual to do that and then a growing number to do it uh we end up in a situation where uh there's a total lack of equity where businesses and individuals who follow the rules are effectively punished for doing so and we end up potentially in a situation where we end up having to impose more stringent restrictions on everybody if we get back into exponential growth piling up more people with covet in the hospitals canceling more surgeries so this is not a joke this is very serious and look i understand people being frustrated and angry with restrictions people are have every right to be deeply frustrated i'm expect i especially understand business owners who have been going going through incredible stress but that stress is not going to get any better if we see if we see widespread uh violation of the public health measures in this province and i would plead with those albertans to take a step back and look at this objectively and have a fair mind the truth is if you're trying to operate um in in many other places around the democratic world well we have had the we've continued to avoid a lockdown style policy here and that's because of the the general spirit of of um respect that albertans have shown for the measures but uh in quebec and ontario right now stay at home warner's in quebec curfews the schools that are shut down the majority of businesses in many jurisdictions that have been shut down here in alberta over ninety five percent of our of businesses are able to operate without significant restrictions from public health measures so we have tried very hard to maintain that balance but it depends on people being responsible and quite frankly to see people in elected government positions flagrant encouraging uh a flagrant disregard of public health measures during a pandemic like this is totally irresponsible so our approach has been to start with education and then to work with people for towards compliance but it's clear to us that there's going to have to be stronger enforcement action uh to maintain a level playing field so that law-abiding individuals and businesses are not punished uh for respecting the rules and uh doctor would you like to comp add to that i think that's clear i would just want to emphasize that it's important to remember that the majority of albertans continue to follow the restrictions in place and we cannot let the actions of a minority dictate again what what the majority get to do so just reminder that the more of us who follow the measures in place every day the faster we'll actually be able to get to a point where we can ease restrictions and it's in all of our best interests for us to work together towards that end one thing to this because i i've heard some of those people encouraging um this kind of irresponsible action i've heard them saying um that their justification is they're not afraid they're not afraid of cove it's not going to affect their but they're healthy young or middle-aged people and and and this is only something that affects quote-unquote the uh the elderly and frail so they're not concerned it's what they're saying folks don't you understand now we're 11 months into this that the death rate for the elderly and frail is directly correlated to how much spread we get in the general community that is the reality we do not live in a situation where we can segregate perfectly segregate uh the the elderly and frail uh from the the rest of society and that's true everywhere uh you know and by the way maybe you will be affected i have a a very dear friend uh a um a leader in the armenian community who uh is exactly my age and and just just died of covid it is real for people uh yes people who are elderly and have health frailties are more vulnerable and maybe they're not the ones who are breaking the rules uh by going to a um to socialize and violating these restrictions but that's not the point the the ratio between cases and hospitalizations has remained absolutely constant across every age group in alberta for 11 months so what does that mean if we get a thousand new cases on a given day we know that about 40 to 45 of those are headed to hospital and we just we know that about 12 of those are likely to pass away so general community transmission does cost lives and that is why this is irresponsible and selfish if you're breaking these rules flagrantly operator can you please put through the next caller this is rick bell with the calgary sun go ahead rick good afternoon um premier how much of this decision there's there's science involved in covet and there's also politics involved in covet no surprise how much of this decision today has to do with the growing frustration with restrictions especially in areas of alberta where your government has enjoyed great support well rick i'll tell you every time we come to discussion about covid measures in the coveted cabinet committee i always say to our colleagues that we have to make these decisions based on uh the best information that we have and not on on political considerations obviously one broader factor is the willingness of albertans to comply with measures and that's something we have to constantly monitor we do polling on that and i'll tell you what the polling says 20 of albertans uh believe that uh the current set of restrictions are too severe about 40 percent say the current set of restrictions are about right and about 40 percent say the current uh measures are not strong enough so there is uh no overwhelming consensus amongst albertans and by the way we've been doing that public opinion research going back uh since march and the number has been pretty consistent uh the percentage of those people who say that the current set of measures are too stringent and should be all eliminated is a um it's a small portion of that 20 uh and so um and i'll remind you that around christmas time there was some public opinion research done which indicated albertans had a higher percentage of albertans uh avoided socializing outside their homes than in any other province that is to say we had higher compliance with public health health measures over the christmas season uh in this province with respect to uh socializing outside people's family cohort so per as as dr hinstra said i believe the vast majority of albertans are are doing everything they can uh to uh um respect the measures and and the spirit and the letter of these measures uh and i i do regret that there is a a small minority of people who are i think insulting the efforts of everyone else to prevent the community's transmission that costs lives operator can you please put through the next caller next is julia wong with global news go ahead julia hi this question i guess can be for the premier and the health minister and dr hinshaw what specific data did you look at that shows the level of transmission and the level of risk is low for indoor fitness restaurants children's sports all the things included in step one and can you share those figures with us well i'll defer that to dr inch i do know that um there is a a growing body of global research on uh the risk associated with different vectors of transmission different social and economic activities uh of course those risks can be mitigated with all sorts of additional public health measures so it's not like we're i'll give you the example of indoor dining in restaurants bars and pubs it's not like we're going back to business as usual there um with a the limitation to serving uh family cook household cohort groups or um uh three one individual plus their two uh designated um close contacts uh plus uh two meters distancing between tables plus mandatory mask wearing plus frequent sanitation plus keeping contact lists so this is not just about you know comparing restaurant businesses as normal uh versus closing them this is much these are very severe constraints that that would still allow some level of operating uh and i think that's an important factor but i'll turn it over to dr hinshaw to talk about risk assessment thank you premier uh two things first of all there is a real world example right next door to us in bc uh with respect to having limited ability to uh have some of these activities open and we've seen that they have been successful in controlling their spread and and that's a really helpful example to be able to see how that plays out in operations again as was mentioned not to open these sectors completely but to allow some opening with restrictions still in place in addition to that what we did is really looked at the evidence of where transmission is most likely to happen and what we've seen is that group fitness events are a high risk of spread when people are in a group and exercising together especially high intensity and so some of the restrictions that would be required for fitness business to open would be things like not having high intensity group fitness and there will be more information coming um in the week ahead about those restrictions but what we're doing is using the evidence to help us open only those activities in those sectors that seem to be the lowest risk part of of that particular sector and so for example with restaurants again what we see is that when people are gathered around a table together sharing a meal eating and drinking of course not wearing masks because that's impossible to do whether that happens in that household cohort's home or if that household cohort is at a restaurant that again is a high risk interaction which is why opening restaurants will still require that that be limited just to that household cohort or people who are living alone again those those two people with whom they're able to interact so those are the kinds of restrictions based on the evidence that we have we have time for three more questions operator can you please put through the next question next question is carlisle facet with ctv go ahead carlisle hi there my questions for dr hinsha i wonder if you can give us an indication of how much the new covet variant factored into your recommendations to government when putting together this stepped plan and if you can also give us an indication on how confident you are that the variant in alberta can be contained that it won't see exponential growth itself there's a really key component of the plan as the premier described which is that each small step is followed by a minimum of three weeks of observation and that while the step down is one of the requirements is that we have to meet a certain level of hospitalizations ensuring we have that capacity the other requirement is that over that three-week time period of observation we don't see our case count starting to rise week over week and so in my opinion the ability to have a very slow measured approach the ability to evaluate and observe each small step forward for that required amount of time and the use of those leading indicators of case count growth and positivity rates and our growth rate those kinds of things help us to be able to take action quickly should we need to with respect to the variant it is concerning that we have again identified the number of cases that we have however the benefit of having significant testing of incoming travelers is that we have been able to identify many of these cases and contain them and the ability of us collectively to stop the variant from becoming a more dominant strain in alberta again will be how well we do at observing all of those public health measures as we take these very gradual steps forward because the more people who step away from following public health measures every day the higher the risk that encounters our encounters of risk and and covid starts to spread whether that's the variant of concern or whether it's the covid that's currently the dominant strain so again it really as it always has been is is up to all of us to be able to maintain that forward momentum but if our case count starts to rise again we will have to stop that progress and consider going back could i just add that while we are you're right to ask this question and we are very concerned about the possibility of uh widespread transmission of the new variants uh and that that is a downside risk there are also there's also some upside positive developments that uh we factor into all of this for example the vaccine program not going as quickly as we would like because of supply and nevertheless uh it will incrementally protect uh more and more people particularly those who are most susceptible to covet secondly uh we have significantly expanded our contact tracing operation uh and so we're now able to complete uh on a typical day over a thousand uh investigations which is up pretty significantly uh and um so that gives us uh a a little bit of extra capacity from the numbers we're currently seeing and um we've also seen of course greater uh constraints on international arrivals uh that to help more closely control the possible importation of the of the variants from abroad so i think those are those are three upside considerations as well operator can you please put through the next caller next is raffy vuja kenyan with cbc go ahead uh hi this is for the premier your government says you can't make plans for vaccine doses you don't have and between pfizer and now modern shipments being delayed you will need to decide whose shots get delayed so how will you make that decision uh i missed the last part rafi we'll have to decide who's who's delayed well actually i will refer that to to minister chandra because he's more familiar with the details of the the next steps in vaccines yeah with the glasses i'm not usually wearing glasses at least i didn't put over my eyes like paul is that too soon to say um rafi um the the news that we got today from modern is still new so we're still going over it uh with uh folks from the ministry as well as dr hinchow's office um and so the these decisions have not been made um like we made though with the decisions when it came to the priority groups in phase one and when we eventually get to decisions related to phase two it's going to be on the recommendations of the uh of our public health officials including dr hinshaw in her office so um perhaps dr hinshaw i i don't know if because we haven't had a chance to discuss this yet because this is all new uh news for us today but um any further info that you'd like to give to that question from raffi thank you minister all of the vaccine decisions and and recommendations that we put forward are based on the data with respect to risk risk of severe outcomes and so you're quite right that with this news having just come in we still need to look at that number of doses and determine how that will impact the planning that we had underway and it will be as it always has been to determine who is at the highest risk and how we allocate those doses if i could just add well that was very discouraging news from moderna today uh rafi you may also have heard the very disturbing reports out of the european union that they appear to be moving towards export restrictions on uh cover 19 vaccines produced in the european union this is something that the german government has been pushing for for some time and that could even further uh delay shipments so that's why i think it's critically important the government of canada demand that that pfizer uh respect its obligations to us through its michigan factory because if we are headed into a several months of vaccine nationalism in the european union we need to find other sources of production um obviously the pfizer facility in michigan would be one of those but um what is so frustrating here is that we ended up with a situation without the relevant pharmaceutical production in canada australia is able to they have producers who produce advisor vaccines unlicensed to that company so pfizer doesn't actually have its own production facility but they will license local producers to do that uh we started cove we became aware of code last january in february i don't understand why uh the federal government did not in that interval um press hard for the establishment of licensing arrangements for canadian producers so i think a a huge opportunity was missed there anyway that's just another risk factor here which is the growing kind of protectionism out of the european union operator can you please put through our last caller yes final question is from audrey naveau with radio canada go ahead audrey hi premier i want to hear you uh in french on something you've said about the willingness of albertans to follow restrictions uh [Music] uh uh thank you very much everyone