EDMONTON -- It will be illegal to gather with anyone you don’t live with this Christmas, unless you live alone, and some local physicians say breaking the law will also break the healthcare system.

“Right now in Alberta we have about two large community hospitals worth of COVID patients in our hospital system,” infectious diseases specialist Lynora Saxinger told CTV News Edmonton. “On top of what we usually do.”

Saxinger suggests anyone considering attending a holiday gathering first imagine the headline, should COVID-19 show up uninvited. 

“‘Family gathering turns into X number of hospitalizations and possible deaths.’ How does that feel? Because really that’s the reality of what people are looking at.” Saxinger said. 

There are roughly 19,000 active cases of COVID-19 in Alberta right now, more than 700 people are in hospital with the disease, 150 of them, in the ICU. 

“I think anyone who truly cares about family, cares about their health,” Darren Markland to CTV News Edmonton. The ICU doctor has been sharing his front line experience publicly, most recently detailing the conversation he had with a patient about calling her loved ones before hooking her up to a ventilator. 

“We are full. There’s so little give in the system” Markland said, “You get people together in an enclosed area around food and alcohol, and all of a sudden even the best intentioned gatherings turn into superspreading events.”

That’s why Markland is urging everyone to follow provincial gathering restrictions. He’s already planning a summer get together with friends and family, and says it’s something to look forward to. 

“We’re going to call it Aussie Christmas, we’re going to wear like Christmas Hawaiian shirts, we’re going to put shrimp on the barbecue, I will not even try to fake an accent.”

Saxinger has similar plans. “[I’m] selling the idea to my family of having Christmas in the summer. And planning a big catch up birthday, catch up Christmas event, when things are going to be so much better than they are right now,” Saxinger said. “I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

Health experts predict COVID-19 cases will surge in mid January due to Albertans disobeying the restrictions. Pediatrician Tehseen Ladha says the situation in hospitals is already at the tipping point. 

“Our staff are overstretched. There aren’t enough people to care for you, so right now the best thing that we can do is keep each other safe and healthy,” she told CTV News Edmonton. 

Ladha says quality of care is already slipping, and she believes the field hospital being set up in the University of Alberta’s Butterdome will soon be more than a precaution, it will be necessary. 

“We’re looking at field hospitals, we’re looking at staff who aren’t trained to be doing certain things that are going to be doing things that they aren’t trained to do,” Ladha said. “We simply don’t have enough people.”

Every doctor who spoke to CTV News Edmonton for this story expressed empathy to Albertans who will miss out on holiday traditions and reconnecting with family. 

“There’s no doubt that seeing them virtually instead of in person will be more difficult than usual,” Ladha said. “We are all apart this year, so we can all be together next year.”