Vaccines
There is a vaccine mix&match study that you can participate in, here, in BC! The clinical trial details are:
- 1 or 4 months between doses
- BNT-Pfizer, Moderna, AZ
- Matched vax for each schedule change (but AZ will only be 4 months)
- Alternating for each combo (except AZ will only ever be dose 1)
Press Briefing
There were three main messages from today’s briefing:
- Kids can now get vaccinated at the mass vax clinics. (More below.)
- The current restrictions don’t expire until Tuesday morning, and you must keep following those orders until then. Really, we mean it. Hospitalizations are down, but we are still using a few surge beds, and still postponing surgeries in the Lower Mainland, so you need to keep Doing The Things.
- We will tell you on Tuesday what the new Orders will be. No, we won’t tell you beforehand, because it’s human nature to think that the last thing you heard is what is in effect now. No, we are not going to give you any hints. No, we didn’t give anybody any hints. NO, we are really not going to tell you.
Regarding vaccinating kids:
- It’s useful for kids to register on the website. They will get an invitation to book like everyone else.
- Kids do not need parental permission.
- Kids DO need some sort of ID, but almost anything will work. Obviously, a Personal Health ID is best, but they will take school ID, birth certificate, even a bank statement.
- If a parent has an appointment booked already, they can just take the kids with them to their appointment and get them vaxxed at the same time. NB: From what I saw at the Creekside Community Centre clinic, a very small percentage of the time is actually putting the dose into the arm, so I don’t think this will slow things down much.
- Public Health will be working to make the mass vax clinics kid-friendly. NB: I don’t think that means balloons and clowns, I think that means nurses who have practice explaining things to kids.
- They said that they decided to do it (mostly) at the mass vax clinics because a) families wanted to go together and b) they didn’t have adequate staffing to do additional vaccinations in the schools. NB: I suspect it was more the latter than the former.
- There will be some vaccinations in the schools in some circumstances. NB: I suspect the exceptions will be rural/remote. Some will also be at whole-of-community clinics. I had the impression that if there are adults being vaccinated there and it’s not a workplace, the kids are welcome.
Q: Ontario was saying something about tight supply, how does that affect mumble mumble second doses mumble mumble? A: We didn’t start up the kids ten days ago in part because we weren’t sure we had the vax for it, but we got a big Moderna shipment in today and we’ll get another tomorrow, so we’ve got lots of vax right now. NB: The Moderna shipment didn’t show up on the dashboard yet, I presume because it missed some sort of daily cutoff. But yeah, my info says that we’re going to get 278K Moderna doses this week on top of 276K Pfizer we’ve already gotten this week and maaaybe another 191K of Pfizer. So. Much. Vax.
Q: What are you going to do about barriers to getting vaxxed like needing to work? A: Well, we already run clinics on weekends, we already have extended hours, we already have mandated paid time off to get vaccinated… We’ve done like 332K in one week, and we’re going to bump that up by about 20% when the Pfizer shipments ramp up in June.
Q: I’m shocked, shocked that some people already got second doses of AZ, WTF? A: There was a very small amount that was going to expire — a few hundred doses — so we told the pharmacists to go ahead and use it instead of throwing it away.
Statistics
+327 cases, +3 deaths, +50,793 first doses, +3,660 second doses.
Currently 331 in hospital / 113 in ICU, 4,636 active cases, 134,521 recovered.
We have 418,150 doses in the fridges; we’ll use it up in 8.3 days at last week’s rate. We’ve given more than we had received by 9 days ago.
We have 289,460 mRNA doses in the fridges; we’ll use it up in 5.8 days at last week’s rate. We’ve given more mRNA shots than we’d received by 9 days ago.
We have 128,690 AZ doses in the fridges, which we are saving for second doses.
Charts
