Alberta review of COVID-19 led by doctors who challenged vaccine policies expected next month

Premier Danielle Smith is expecting a report next month on the integrity of Alberta’s COVID-19 data and decision-making from a little-known task force led by a physician who, at the height of the pandemic, claimed the government manipulated statistics to usher in restrictions.In November, 2022, one month after becoming Premier, Ms. Smith, directed then health minister Jason Copping to create a task force to review years of health data and make recommendations regarding a future pandemic. The United Conservative Party government gave the group a sweeping mandate to explore whether the “right data” was collected and assess the “integrity, validity, reliability and quality of the data/information used to inform pandemic decisions” by Alberta Health Services and other health organizations, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.Gary Davidson, former chief of emergency medicine at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, was installed as chair of the task force about a year ago. In September, 2021, Dr. Davidson claimed that the government had overblown the COVID-19 crisis in hospitals, an assertion AHS quickly rebuked. At that time, AHS data showed Alberta was being crushed by the fourth wave of the pandemic, with deaths and illnesses climbing, leaving intensive care units straining under the patient load.