No Warning as Alberta Shuts Down Long-COVID Clinics

It’s not hard to connect the dots between the anti-vaccine extremists, including Premier Danielle Smith, who now dominate Alberta’s United Conservative Party and the admission by a beleaguered Alberta Health Services that it is shutting down its long-COVID clinics in Calgary, Edmonton and Sherwood Park.

AHS, once a model of how to run a modern integrated provincial public health-care agency, is in the early stages of being broken up by Smith’s government, which is bent on relitigating the 2020-to-the-present COVID-19 pandemic from a MAGA perspective that denies the reality of the disease, believes life-saving vaccines kill children and views public health measures as a totalitarian control mechanism.

However the desire to shutter the seven long-COVID clinics was communicated to the cowed current leaders of AHS, it is safe to assume this reckless decision did not originate with health-care professionals at a time when medical researchers are still trying to unravel the mysteries of long COVID.

And it is no mere coincidence that this happened only a day after an anti-vax UCP MLA’s incoherent ramblings about how he’d like to see the vaccine banned completely caused a stir on social media. MLA Eric Bouchard has since recanted his apparent claim that an actual plan to ban the COVID vaccine was in the works.

Reports last week — first on social media and then in legacy media publications — revealed that COVID long-haulers treated by the clinics began receiving letters dated Aug. 8 telling them the clinics were about to be shut down and they would have to find treatment for their affliction elsewhere.

“Your health and well-being remain a priority, and we are committed to ensuring you receive support during the transition,” the letter from the AHS Long COVID Inter-Professional Outpatient Program cheerfully said. “We understand that this change might be challenging for some and thank you for your understanding and co-operation during this transition period.”

In other words: So long, we’re cutting you loose!

AHS appears to have only acknowledged the program was being shuttered in a statement to media outlets when reporters started calling. There was no formal public announcement of the plan and no advance warning it was being considered.

The AHS media statement, which is not posted to the news release section of the agency’s website, used the excuse that the program was set up as a temporary measure and has now run its course. This cannot be disputed, of course, although long COVID has certainly not run its course and was thought last year to be afflicting something like 65 million people worldwide.

News organizations that requested additional information from AHS about its announcement did not receive a response.

Even as this was going on, however, the website for AHS’s Edmonton long-COVID clinic at the University of Alberta remained live. It was deleted Saturday.

A year ago, Statistics Canada reported that about one in nine Canadian adults (11.7 per cent of the total adult population or about 3.5 million Canadians) reported experiencing long-term COVID-19 symptoms.

In Alberta, though, a significant portion of our UCP political leadership doesn’t even want to acknowledge that the disease exists or is anything more serious than a cold.

Statistics Canada also reported that about two-thirds of Canadians who sought health-care services for long COVID “reported not receiving adequate treatment, service or support for any of their symptoms.” Presumably these numbers will now rise dramatically in Alberta.

Whether they will be reflected in official statistics is another matter, as the extensive testing provided by the clinics will be hard for people with the condition to access, and many without a family physician will simply fall through the cracks in our intentionally fractured health-care system.

CityNews quoted a former director of the University of Alberta long-COVID clinic yesterday saying it does not appear as if numbers of patients with the condition are declining as new cases continue to be reported.

“There are people who have been infected with COVID, even in the last six months, that are finding themselves with these persistent symptoms of fatigue, brain fog, and in some cases the burden of these symptoms are so significant that they can’t get back to their usual daily activities,” Dr. Grace Lam told CityNews.

Health Canada defines long COVID, which it prefers to call “post-COVID condition,” as “when the symptoms of COVID-19 persist for more than 12 weeks after the infection.” It can affect adults and children.

There have been reports of more than 100 symptoms, Health Canada says on its website, listing fatigue, trouble sleeping, shortness of breath, general pain and discomfort, cognitive problems such as memory loss and difficulty concentrating, and mental health symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, as the most common among adults.

A report commissioned for the U.S. Social Security Administration concluded longer-term impacts could include heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, kidney disease, diabetes and immune dysfunction.

Smith’s personal history of vaccine suspicion, COVID skepticism and enthusiasm for quack COVID cures is well known. She has compared Albertans vaccinated against COVID-19 to supporters of the Nazi party in early 20th-century Germany, called wilfully unvaccinated people “the most discriminated against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime” and famously advocated for the veterinary antiparasitic drug Ivermectin to treat COVID.

The UCP is widely believed to be considering introducing an amendment to provincial rights legislation in the next session of the legislature to make it illegal to require anyone to have a vaccination for anything. This will have serious and long-lasting public health impacts.

Just as they claimed before the 2023 provincial election that voters need not worry about Smith’s views because she would soon be replaced, UCP supporters are now suggesting through sympathetic media columnists that the premier is only trying to placate the party’s anti-vax base and everything will get back to normal as soon as she has survived a leadership vote at the party’s annual general meeting in early November.

Smith’s record belies this convenient fiction.