Calgary’s Mayor Jyoti Gondek responded to the province’s, changes to gathering restrictions over the holiday season, announced yesterday.
Speaking to LiveWire Calgary’s Darren Krause, Gondek said that she was unsurprised by the changes.
“I believe we have a government that is stuck in a place where they’re trying to keep everyone happy, and as a result, they are making decisions that are not in the best interest of public health,” she said.
The Mayor disagreed with the province’s lifting of indoor social gathering restrictions for unvaccinated Albertans.
“I don’t believe that people who are unvaccinated by choice should be given exactly the same freedoms that the rest of the population has, when the rest of the population that is vaccinated went and did the right thing,” she said.
The restrictions exemption program and the city’s vaccine passport remain in effect for commercial venues.
Speaking yesterday to the province, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called the lifting of measures a way to reduce division between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in the province.
Covid-19 cases on the rise
Gondek's comments came hours before the Alberta government announced new totals for daily Covid-19 cases and Omicron variant cases.
On Thursday, the total number of Omicron variant cases in the province doubled, going to 119 from 60 the day before. The majority of those new cases were from infections on December 13 and 14.
A total of 83 of those cases were identified in the Calgary Health Zone.
The province reported a total of 473 net new Covid-19 cases, with 481 cases on Wednesday, and eight previous cases removed from the data rolls going back to September of this year.
In Calgary, the total number of active cases increased to 1,867, up from 1,582 a week ago.
