On March 22, the provincial government announced it would not move to Step 3 of its reopening plan. The decision was based on the upward trend of COVID-19 cases, like this chart, which shows daily new case numbers over time.
COVID-19 hospitalizations were supposed to be less than 300 to move forward with Alberta's reopening plan. This condition was technically met on March 22, but at the time Health Minister Tyler Shandro said that based on recent trends, the province expected hospitalizations to rise above 300 by the end of the week. As of March 29, there were 277 hospitalizations.
The province announced a second state of public health emergency amid a spike in cases in November 2020. Premier Jason Kenney announced the staged reopening plan in January, when it looked as though the curve was flattening. Step 1 and 2 of the plan were carried out while cases were still trending downwards in February and early March, respectively. However, as Alberta opened back up, case numbers started to rise again.
Some predicted this outcome, such as University of Alberta PhD candidate Conor Ruzycki, who said that opening restaurants posed a danger because of aerosol transmission. Malgorzata (Gosia) Gasperowicz, a developmental biologist at the University of Calgary, also predicted a rise in case numbers back in February, modeling a third wave of COVID-19 occurring under Step 1 of the plan, fueled primarily by the B.1.1.7 U.K. variant of the virus.
Gasperowicz' predictions line up with the data that is now available, indicating another spike is potentially on the way, even without the move to Step 3.