Mayor of Alberta town frustrated he wasn’t informed of positive COVID case

EDSON (660 NEWS) – The mayor of an Alberta town is fuming over not being told about a positive case of COVID-19 in his community.

This comes after PTW Energy Services confirmed it was linked to several cases of the P.1 variant after Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health reported a “significant” outbreak.

One of those variant cases was found in the town of Edson, west of Edmonton but the mayor of the town said he was not made aware of that case.

Mayor Kevin Zahara said he found out about the positive case while reading the news and not from Alberta Health Services (AHS), who has yet to share those details.

“We have not received a phone call, email or any correspondance from Alberta Health Services regarding this. I don’t know what the risk is in our community right now. I don’t know what the mitigation strategy is.”

Zahara said it’s frustrating that AHS has not been transparent with many communities especially as cases of the variants are rising.

“We’re supposed to be partners, we keep hearing that we’re all in this together. Quite frankly, it’s felt like Alberta Health Services doing their thing and everybody else is left on their own.”

“You wouldn’t say, ‘hey, there’s a forest fire but we’re not going to tell you where and hopefully it’s not your house.’ That just doesn’t happen in emergencies.”

Many comments to Zahara’s Facebook post express similar frustration with many calling for more transparency with the provincial and federal governments.

The outbreak linked to PTW Energy Services accounts for 26 cases of the P1 variant so far. On Monday, Alberta reported 432 new cases of the COVID-19 variants of concern.

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