2021-06-17 BC

Mitigation Measures

This article says that the province expects schools to open in September to “near-normal”. They expect there will still be daily health checks, with sick students and teachers staying home, but no more cohorts and learning groups. It sounds like they haven’t fully decided about masks.

Press Briefing

Today, they said:

  • NACI said you should get an mRNA second dose after an AZ first dose, but BC is still going to let you choose. Don’t worry, anything you get in any combination will be safe; there is some preliminary data which says that having different vax might be better, but we don’t really know yet.
  • We will try hard to get you the same mRNA vax for your second dose as the first, but it might not be the same. Don’t worry, it’s fine, Pfizer and Moderna are basically interchangeable.
  • They will try to deliver stats on which deaths were vaccinated and which were unvaccinated.
  • We are getting 392K of Moderna this week, 378K next week, and 382K the week after. NB: they didn’t say anything about the 135K BC should be getting from the US donation which landed today.
  • We already got 326K of Pfizer this week, we’ll get 328K next week, and 328K the week after that. The week after that (July 5), however, we were expecting 328K and we’re only going to get 122K, and the same the next week (July 12). They are going to make it up to us in the last two weeks of July, however, so we’ll be okay. NB: we will have gotten a cumulative total of 6.7M doses by about Canada Day.
  • COVID safety plans have been good, that’s what has allowed us to keep so many businesses open. In Stage 3, we’ll start transitioning to “Communicable Diseases Safety Plans” to prepare us for respiratory season. NB: Reading between the lines, Dr.H seems really worried about respiratory season. Maybe she’s worried that we’re going to get absolutely hammered after a year without flu/colds?
  • The province has opened a TON of pop-up clinics for first doses, check your local health authority’s web site. NB: I couldn’t find any for VCH, but here is Fraser Health walk-in vax clinic info.
  • All 9 hospitals which had surgeries stop have restarted, and we’re working hard to get everybody their surgeries.
  • REGISTER BOOK VAX!

Q&A

Heavily, heavily and snarkily paraphrased.

Q: Why is it still so hard to visit grandma??? A: The guidelines are not being adhered to consistently, we know, we’re working on it.

Q: Why, if the resident is double-vaxxed and the visitors are double-vaxxed, do we still have any visitation measures in place??? A: Because it’s not all about you, it’s about everyone in the facility. Even with good vax, there is still a (small) chance of infection, and if COVID-19 gets into a long term care home, it can still spread wickedly.

Q: Will there be lots of people who don’t want AZ because of the NACI guidelines, and will that get wasted? A: AZ+AZ is safe and effective. About half of Team AZ wants AZ as the second dose. NB: No, she did not answer the question.

Q: If you are AZ+AZ, will you be able to travel to the US? There was a Springsteen concert which wouldn’t let you in if you’d had anything but US-approved vaxes. A: It looks like governments will work off the WHO list of approved vaxxes, but we can’t stop businesses from doing stupid things.

Q: Some high-viz artists have already booked some big concert venues in fall, wtf? A: We have not approved any large gatherings. There are some big unknowns with the fall respiratory season. Not stated exactly, but implied: “They shouldn’t have done that, they might have to cancel.”

Q: Are we going to require vax passports to go to concerts? A: I hope not, I am opposed to vax passports, but I can’t keep businesses from doing their own thing.

Q: Why are cases falling so much slower in the Interior? A: It’s not one thing, it’s a variety: confidence, complacency, convenience. The hot spots move around, but the central Okanagan has been a consistent hot area.

Q: Are we seeing vax hesitancy in the Interior? A: Yeah, some, but we’ve been working on it and seeing some good results in places like Rutland.

Q: What is VCH doing right? A: Lots of different things.

Q: Gyms have been closed, now they are re-opening. What do gym-goers need to pay attention to? A: Closed confined spaces are the most troubling. If you feel even the slightest bit off, DON’T GO.

Q: Can you give advice about dosing interval? A: Not really, except to say that shorter (like 4 weeks) is worse than longer. Six months might be best, we just don’t know yet. But anything from like 8 weeks to like 16 weeks is clearly fine.

Q: In the US, they are talking about boosters, are we going to need boosters? A: In the US, they mostly had the short (4 week) interval, and that’s not as good, so they might actually need boosters. We mostly have a long interval, so we probably won’t need boosters for a while.

Statistics

+120 cases, +1 death, +6308 AZ doses, +9,568 first doses, +57,161 second doses.

The one person who died was part of the Richmond hospital outbreak, was in their 80s, and was unvaccinated.

First dosesSecond doses
adults76.5%17.0%
over-12s74.8%16.6%
all BCers67.9%15.1%

Currently 131 in hospital / 44 in ICU, 1451 active cases, 143,579 recovered.

We have 381,389 doses in fridges; we’ll use it up in 6.5 days at last week’s rate. We’ve given more doses than we’d received by 8 days ago.

We have 283,228 mRNA doses in fridges; we’ll use it up in 4.8 days (ulp!) at last week’s rate. We’ve given more mRNA doses than we’d received by 3 days ago.

We have 98,161 AZ doses in fridges; we’ll use it up in 16.6 days at last week’s rate.

Charts