Measures
The PNE will not open this summer. Colour me unsurprised. A little sad, because I think we are going to have very few cases in July, and it will be outdoors, but unsurprised.
Remember the guy who turned his penthouse into a nightclub? He got sentenced (and the judge was NOT happy with him).
Supply
Canada is getting or just got 1M doses from Moderna, and oProcurement Minister Anita Anand just tweeted that we’re getting another 1M next week! SO. MUCH. VAX!!
Transmission
See my rant in today’s General blog post for a rant on airborne vs. droplet.
Checkpoints
There are going to be travel roadblocks preventing non-essential travel, starting tomorrow and going through the weekend, at:
- Hwy 1 near Boston Bar
- Hwy 3 near Manning Park
- Hwy 5 near Old Toll Booth
- Hwy 99 near Lillooet
Vaccinations
It will be interesting to see how the government responds to high school students now being eligible for the vax. On the one hand:
- There has been lots of data from other jurisdictions saying that schools are drivers of transmission.
- Parents have been having major freak-outs for approximately two years now.
- School is really important, and the school experience has been greatly damaged by the pandemic. Kids have been very badly affected by the measures taken to combat COVID-19.
On the other hand:
- The data from our jurisdiction says that schools are not drivers of transmission here.
- Children are much less likely to be harmed by COVID-19.
- EVERYBODY has been badly affected by the measures taken to combat COVID-19.
There’s also the question of where to vaccinate the kids (at school or in the mass-vax clinics) which I discussed yesterday. Apparently, vaccinations have been done at schools in the past, but Dr. H has not yet decided if they will do so this time.
My low-confidence guess is that Dr. Henry will announce that they will start vaccinating (on a voluntary basis, of course) in hotspot schools once they finish with grocery workers. Especially given that we’re getting about 135K of Moderna both this week and next week, we’ve got plenty to give to the kids.
My guess is that they will start by vaccinating Surrey high school students around 17 May, doing other Fraser Health students around 31 May, and Vancouver schools around 7 June. I bet they won’t try to get all of them — if a student forgets their permission slip, they’ll just get folded into the mass vax clinics.
Remember how the case counts in Prince Rupert fell dramatically after the whole-of-community vaccination drive? IT DIDN’T STOP! There was ONE case in Prince Rupert last week:
Statistics
+572 cases, +0 deaths (yay!), +31,656 first doses, +1,412 second doses (+2738 AZ).
Currently 481 in hospital / 161 in ICU, 6,877 active cases, 124,252 recovered. No data today on how many under monitoring.
We’ve got 377,050 doses in the fridges; we’ll use it up in 11.1 days at last week’s rate. We’ve delivered more doses than we’d received by 8 days ago.
We’ve got 323,493 mRNA doses in the fridges; we’ll use it up in 11.5 days at last week’s rate. We’ve delivered more mRNA doses than we’d received by 6 days ago.
We’ve got 53,557 doses of AZ in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 10.8 days at last week’s rate.
Charts
