The province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health believes public health teams were as ready as possible to deal with the spike in cases over the last year.

Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says the first wave of COVID in the spring of 2020 informed them on how they needed to move forward in terms of being strict with contact tracing and quarantine requirements, and having to increase testing capacity.

However, she says dealing with the Alpha variant was new for everyone at the time, and there was a lot they learned along the way.

She thinks they were prepared, but there are some things that can only be learned by doing.