NB: I hurt a tendon in my hand, so took a few days off from typing. It will probably take me a few days to catch up on all that has happened, and I will be less detailed.
Vaccination Clinics
Over the weekend, vaccine bookings have opened up to ALL yes all adults! This is an awesome milestone!
Justin McElroy said that 70% of the people 18-40 years old have registered to get a vax. (I don’t know where he got his numbers, but he’s reliable.) He also made some graphs with how many were vaccinated by nine days ago:
Based on how many have vaccinated, how many have registered, the shape of the curves, and knowing the % vaxxed is nine days behind, I squinted and crunched some numbers, and I am guessing that BC will get to 82% vaccinated, even without vaccinating kids 0-12. The COVID in BC Modelling Group’s video suggests that’s about the level that we need for herd immunity, yay!! NB: The COVID in BC Modelling Group’s video is worth watching. They have tended to forecast a more pessimistic outlook than what has actually happened.
I am guessing that we will hit 80% in mid June, at which point I expect that BC will switch over to mostly giving second doses.
Press Briefing
Last Thursday, Dr. H mostly talked about “breakout” cases, cases where someone who had been vaccinated got sick. You can see the slides, but SPOILER! the vaccines work really really absofuckinglutely well.
Today, Dr.H mostly talked about AZ second doses. The basic message was to chill out, that they would have enough AZ for everyone who wanted one, but that y’all might want a different vax for the second dose. (We should hear the results of the UK mix&match AZ/Pfizer study in a week or two.)
She mentioned that the efficacy of the first shot goes up for a while, even after the first three weeks. She mentioned that you get better efficacy AND more durable, long-lasting protection, from a second shot.
The stats look much better now than they did two weeks ago, but we aren’t completely out of the woods yet. Dix said that BC is still using 128 regular surge beds and 14 ICU surge beds. (Presumably those are mostly in Fraser Health.)
Statistics
- Wed/Thu: +587 cases, +5 deaths
- Thu/Fri: +494 cases, +2 deaths
- Fri/Sat: +443 cases
- Sat/Sun: +493 cases
- Sun/Mon: +424 cases
For the past three days, +14 deaths, +145,063 first doses (!!!!), 5,143 second doses.
Currently 350 in hospital / 132 ICU, 5021 active cases, 132841 recovered.
We have 202,162 doses in the fridges; we will use that up in 3.7 days at last week’s rate. We have given more doses than we had received by 7 days ago.
We have 161,578 mRNA doses in the fridges; we will use that up in 3.01 days at last week’s rate. We have given more mRNA doses than we had received by 7 days ago.
Note that 3 days is not very many. The good news is that a lot of vax will be coming soon.
NB: I’m not going to talk about AZ doses until they become relevant again.
Charts
I am really astounded at how linear our rolling 7-day average of cases’ (i.e. the blue line in the graph immediately below) decline is. It’s about 18 cases per day. If we keep that up, we’ll be at 380 cases per day by Victoria Day. I had kind of expected the blue line to fall faster at about now due to the vaccinations, but I guess I was wrong.
