Alberta's Chief Medical Officer: Even If You Test Negative, You’re Still Legally Required to Isolate

Hinshaw said the BA.1 Omicron variant is still the dominant strain in Alberta, but the BA.2 subvariant isn’t far behind.

“We are monitoring BA.2 separate from BA.1 and over the last couple of months we’ve seen that the proportion of our cases that are BA.2 are slowly increasing,” said Hinshaw. “We are still at less than half of our new detected cases that are BA.2, so BA.1 is still our dominant strain in Alberta.”

Hinshaw said based on looking at other countries, while BA.2 seems to be more transmissible, it does not seem to be a higher risk for severe outcomes.