Vaccination Clinics
Dix tweeted that if you have registered, you will be contact to book if you are:
- Over 56 years old (born in 1965) – at midnight tonight
- Over 54 years old (1967 or earlier) – on Sun, May 2
- Over 52 years old (born in 1969) – on Tues, May 4
- Over 50 years old (born in 1971) – on Thurs, May 6
Press Briefing
You can find the written statement and video here. Dr. Henry said:
- We expect to get J&J next week.
- We are now booking those 58+.
- About 15% of the vax has gone to the occupation-based vax track. The way they talked about it, I had the distinct impression that they had made a policy decision that they were going to give 15% to the occupation track — not that it just so happened that they had given 15%.
- We are getting MUCH more vax in the coming month.
- ➡️ Every adult will have access by mid June at the rate we expect to go. ⬅️
- They were trying something different with the pop-ups and uh it needs work, so we’re working on it.
- Get registered!
Dix said:
- Heavy paraphrasing: Yeah, we screwed up the pop-ups, but if you want to be innovative, ya gotta try things, and some will fail. It was a learning experience, and we’re working on doing better.
- But look at all the good things we’ve done! We’ve vaxxed the old folks’ homes, we got the CEVs, we’ve vaxxed a bunch of rural/remote communities, we’ve done all-of-community in hotspots!
- 38.6% [of adults] have gotten their first shot, and LOTS MOAR VAX COMING!
- He gave the numbers for how many surgeries had been postponed, how many had been done.
- Get registered!
Q&A
Reminder: heavily and snarkily paraphrased!
Q: Who is in the hospital? Is it young folks, people who didn’t get vaccinated, what? A: Well, if you had read the Surveillance Report which came out yesterday, you would have seen that it’s mostly 40-70 year-olds who had not gotten vaccinated or were still within their two week post-immunization window. Some ppl got infected after vaccination, but the rates of infection are order of magnitude lower after vaccination.
Q: What are you doing to convince WA state to vaccinate our people for us? A: I talk to my colleagues in AK/WA/OR/ID/MT regularly, and just a few days ago, Alaska was vaccinating people in Hyder, BC. I’ve been talking with Gov. Inslee of WA about vaccinating our cross-border truckers. Something something Point Roberts also, as we have arrangements with WA to let their kids go to our schools.
Q: Why were there 12 surgery cancellations in Island Health, was that patients from elsewhere getting redirected to Island Health? A: Dix: no. Those postponements were unrelated to COVID.
Q: What were they related to? A: Dix: mumble mumble something something. Island Health rocks, but these were due to ongoing problems with the health system. Hey look, it’s a really small number, but we wanted to be transparent.
Q: People are piiiiisssssed about how you totally screwed up the pop-up clinics. Will you admit that it was a total clusterfuck? A: Absolutely! We did it with the best of intentions, we wanted to reach the people who have not been registering, but the execution was F’d. We have not given up, we are going to try again to work with community leaders to get people vaxxed. And oh, BTW, if you don’t live in Community X, don’t fucking go to Community X’s clinics, geez! And get registered!
Q: Research in the US, which of course is completely applicable to Canada, says that minorities aren’t hesitant about vax as much as confused. We’ve had a confusing rollout with programs starting and stopping. What are you doing to unconfuse people? A: It’s been confusing and changing a lot because we have not had a reliable, adequate supply. That’s about to change, we are going to have So. Much. Vax! Go register!
Q: People are anxious, why can’t you just set a schedule? A: Look, we’re doing the best we can to distribute an unreliable, inadequate supply around the province with an uncertain number of people who are ready to get vaxxed. We’ve been down to 10K doses before we more got in, that’s how close we’ve had to cut it. And we really don’t want to cancel clinics. ➡️ That’s why we have been pushing registration, because we need to know how many people to plan for. ⬅️ Next week is going to be so much better, so much vax. GO REGISTER! Register your friends! Register your enemies! Everyone who gets vaxxed makes it better for the rest of us. And with all the vax, we’re going to zoom down the age list much faster starting next week.
Q: You called the pop-up clinics innovative, why don’t you just fix them instead of shelve the idea? A: Uh, because we’re out of vax. Hopefully it will be better next week, so GO REGISTER!
Q: We keep hearing that there’s no more AZ vax in the pharmacies, but now Walmart has doses, WTF? A: I absolutely insist that the record-keeping be pristine, so we know exactly who got what brand/lot, and not all of the pharmacies had that capability, and we also wanted to address communities that were at higher risk, so the vaccine was unevenly distributed. Now, the pharmacy distributors might be rebalancing, sending vax from places that didn’t use it to places that will use it. But honestly, once it gets into the pharmacy system, we lose visibility of it until it pops up in our system as an entry in a health record, and there’s a bit of a lag there. (BTW, that means that some of you who got AZ doses will probably get invitations to the age-based track, just ignore those.) But what I can say about AZ is that we are not going to get any more soon. But don’t worry, we have guarantees that we’ll get enough for our second doses.
Dix: There’s only about 10K still out there, but almost all of that is spoken for.
Q: Are you worried about Albertans bringing virus in with them to BC? A: Uh, yeah, duh. Albertans, please stay home until later in the summer! We luv ya, but we don’t luv yer germs.
Q: Why didn’t you foresee the problems with the pop-ups? A: We were trying, and it didn’t work, but hey, at least we publicized vaccination in those communities?
Q: Which front-line workers are next in line? A: We are still working on first responders, school staff, and childcare. We expect to get through them in the next three weeks. We also have been using and will continue to use vax for outbreak management, like we just did with Site C. As J&J becomes available, we’ll figure out who is next on the list, possibly people like truckers.
Dix: please remember that we have done a TON of targeted vaccinations in rural/remote communities, in First Nations communities, in long-term care / assisted living / independent living homes, etc. Look at Dawson Creek! They had really high case rates and really low vax rate and that’s changed completely.
Q: About the pop-ups, the people in the community said they weren’t notified, even though they had registered, what methods did you use to reach people in the community? A: I don’t have the operational details. In under-registered communities, we don’t know if the problem is that they don’t know how to work the web site or if they just aren’t emotionally prepared yet to register.
Oh yeah! I forgot to say that our Speak Survey is still out there, please go take the survey! I want to particularly ask young men, people over 75, ethnic groups, and rural/remote people to please take this survey!
Statistics
+853 cases, +1 death, +43,405 first doses, +561 second doses (11551 AZ doses).
Currently 503 in hospital / 178 in hospital, 7,996 active cases, 11,628 under monitoring, 118,937 have recovered.
We have 223,115 doses in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 6.3 days at last week’s rate. We have given more doses than we had received by 10 days ago.
We have 139,753 mRNA doses in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 6.3 days at last week’s rate. We have given more mRNA doses than we had received by 8 days ago.
We have 83,362 AZ doses in the fridges, which we’ll use up in 8.8 days at last week’s rate.
Charts
