Good morning, everyone.
Over the last several months, The Globe and Mail’s Alberta health reporter Alanna Smith has been documenting a measles outbreak in the province, which is now the worst in North America.
And this week, she revealed details, through newly released documents, about how the outbreak began from a small number of cases and grew exponentially. As of Wednesday, there were 1,790 cases in Alberta and growing.
The documents were obtained through a freedom of information request and provide a glimpse of the early days of Alberta’s outbreak.
As Alanna reported, cases began to emerge in March, and the situation quickly spiralled − with outbreaks traced back to travellers, a northern First Nations community and a Mennonite school, the documents show.
Canada’s outbreak began last October in New Brunswick before spreading to multiple other provinces.
The 432 pages of documents, which are partly redacted, include internal e-mails between officials at Alberta Health Services between March and May this year, in addition to minutes from emergency response and provincial measles task force meetings.
During the first two months of the outbreak, the public was kept mostly in the dark by government and health officials regarding both the extent of the crisis and how it was handled. After remaining silent for months, chief medical officer of health Mark Joffe put out a statement on April 11 that encouraged vaccination and notices of possible exposure locations, but days later, his contract expired and he was gone.
The next month, in a presentation at a university, Joffe said “a complete failure of leadership at all levels” and public complacency contributed to Alberta’s measles outbreak.
While internal e-mails and meeting notes show that senior leaders at AHS, in co-ordination with Joffe, were in constant communication about the outbreak and how best to mitigate transmission, the documents also show it was common for AHS to have to wait for government approval to implement any safety measures.
Maddison McKee, press secretary to Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services Adriana LaGrange, said the government stands by its approach to the measles outbreak. “Alberta’s government has always taken the measles situation seriously,” McKee told Alanna in a statement.
She said the province’s response is guided by public-health experts, pointing to vaccination clinics, expanded vaccine eligibility and Alberta’s awareness campaign, which began in May, months after the outbreak first started.
John D’Or Prairie, which is one of three communities that make up the Little Red River Cree Nation in Northern Alberta, was one of – if not the first – outbreak location in the province.
Internal e-mails between senior staff at AHS also reveal other early cases were linked to a Mennonite wedding in Ontario and probable or possible exposures through domestic and international travel, to places such as Kenya, India and Mexico.
A two-year-old girl was the first confirmed case in the Calgary area, admitted to hospital on March 14. The child had recently returned from a Mennonite wedding in Leamington, Ont., where she was exposed to a measles case, e-mails show. She had also recently travelled to Mexico. Her two-year-old cousin, who also attended the wedding, became the second known case in the Calgary area. The cousin was also unvaccinated.
Francesco Rizzuti, a Calgary zone medical officer of health, said in a March 20 e-mail to Joffe that six children, all two and under with various levels of immunization, had been sent for measles testing overnight. The majority had no known sick contacts.
“Sadly, I think this could be our reality for a while,” Joffe responded.
Among the first cases in the Edmonton zone were members of a family who had recently returned from Kenya, with a known travel exposure, the e-mails show. The first case, a 12-year-old boy, was confirmed in mid-March. His three siblings, all unvaccinated, were also believed to have been infected.
Ifeoma Achebe, lead medical officer of health in the Central Zone, said in an April 8 e-mail to colleagues that parents were refusing to comply with public-health measures, causing multiple cases to emerge daily. She noted that the vaccination rate for the school was 23 per cent.
McKee said the province is encouraged by a gradual drop in cases over the past three weeks.
This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.