Press Briefing
There was a press briefing today that I missed because my lazy ass was still in bed. From Twitter, apparently the high points were:
- They are dropping the age part of the booster eligibility priority queue (mostly) and are going to go strictly on time-based, with everybody at 6 months since their second dose. There is a minor problem of 800K backlog of people who got their second dose more than six months ago, but they’ll get to you soon, really. Note that people over 60, people with AZ+AZ,, Indigenous people, and healthcare workers still have priority over other people.
- Pregnant people are also prioritized for boosters. Call the booking line, tell them you are pregnant, and they’ll fix you up.
- They are ramping up boosters. They made a call for all the immunizers from before to come out again yesterday (e.g. retired doctors); 1100 people have responded. They have been securing large spaces, etc., so clearly mass vax clinics are coming again. Why didn’t they do this before? Dunno, maybe because holidays made it too complicated? Maybe they just didn’t have enough lead time? Wishful thinking?
- There are now 720 booster sites with more coming.
- The mandatory isolation period for vaxxed peope is now 5 days if you have no symptoms, and you need to wear a mask everywhere for 5 days after that. Unvaxxed people still need to isolate for 10 days.
- Only essential visitors to LTCH until 18 Jan at least.
Statistics
+3,795 cases, +3 deaths, +3,826 first doses, +1,731 second doses, +24,815 other doses.
Currently 220 in hospital / 73 in ICU, 20,811 active cases, 231,058 recovered.
+2 health care facility outbreaks for 15 total.
The tests have 21.5% positivity.
| first doses | second doses | third doses | |
| of adults | 92.3% | 89.6% | 21.0% |
| of over-12s | 92.0% | 89.2% | 19.6% |
| of over-5s | 88.1% | 82.9% | * |
| of all BCers | 85.8% | 80.7% | 17.8% |
Charts
