Vaccine Clinics
A friend of mine who is hospital-adjacent tells me that he got a message yesterday telling him that vax would be available today for people like my friend who work in the hospital but who are not health-care workers. (I presume this includes people like janitors, laundry staff, and the woman who runs the coffee shop.)
Friend said that there were clinics at five VCH sites today: VGH, St Paul’s, BC Children’s, Richmond Hospital, and North Shore.
I asked about how it was run, and this is what my friend remembered:
- There were about 20-25 nurses giving vaccines.
- There were maybe 15 people directing patients and keeping things rolling.
- They had an aftercare room with 3-4 staff. Two were working on recruiting people into a study on the vaccine and asking patients to fill out COVID-19 questionnaire.
- There were a few people — maybe six? — asking if they had a hospital ID.
- My friend said that the people directing traffic were not very good, that my friend stood in the wrong line for a bit.
- My friend said that there was an hour wait.
Vaccine Supply
Canada approved the Johnson & Johnson vaccine! We don’t know yet when we will get how much, but still, it’s great news.
Pfizer has committed to delivering 1.5M more doses in March, 1M more in April, and 1M more in May. That’s so much that I’m puzzling a little about how they are going to get it all into arms.
My estimate is that BC will have about 715K doses by the end of March, while Dr. Ballem said that Ph2 was going to take 415K doses and run until 12 April, when the mass vax clinics were going to start. (Sandbaggers!)
Hmmm. There’s some discrepancies regarding the AZ shipment:
- On Wednesday 3 March, Canada received 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made by Serum Institute of India.
- On Thursday, Dr. Henry said that the AZ doses would arrive next week.
- The friend who told me about the hospital vaccination clinic today said they were using AstraZeneca, which means the doses have arrived.
- The BC CDC dashboard doesn’t show that the AZ vax has arrived.
Maybe Dr. Henry was just sandbagging again? Or maybe they had been planning to do the hospital’s vaccination with mRNA, but the AZ came in and they decided to use it instead? That seems odd, because the AZ is at more of a premium than the mRNA vaccines right now.
Daily Statistics
Today: +648 cases, including +4 of B.1.1.7 and +0 of B.1.351, +4 deaths, +12,238 first doses, +119 second doses.
Currently 255 in hospital / 66 in ICU, 4,901 active cases, 8,861 under monitoring, 76,752 people recovered.
Charts
NB: I have evidence that BC received some AstraZeneca/SII vaccine from the 500,000 doses which arrived on Wednesday (see above), but I don’t know exactly how much. For the chart above, I guessed that BC got 12.5% (62,500), but it might be 13.5% (67,500). I will adjust in future instances of this chart.