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Canada’s chief public health officer said booster shots could help reduce severe illness if the country sees a resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall and winter.
Publication date:
Jul 01, 2022 • 1 day ago • 3 minutes read • 16 comments Canada’s chief public health officer said booster vaccines could help reduce severe illness if the country experiences a resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall and winter. Photo by Blair Gable/REUTERS
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A tough decision by health officials in British Columbia to limit who gets fourth doses of the COVID-19 vaccine appears to go against the advice of Canada’s chief medical officer.
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Despite continued pressure to change its position, the province only gives fourth doses to people aged 70 and over, local residents over 55 and people in long-term care. These individuals can receive their fourth dose six months after their last booster.
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam warned Thursday that there could be an increase in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks due to circulating highly transmissible Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants that evade immunity more than previous variants .
That’s why she urged booster laggards to catch up now.
She and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos emphasized the importance of up-to-date vaccination status, noting that 40 percent of Canadians have not yet received a booster after their primary two vaccines, putting Canada behind other G7 countries when it comes to for three doses.
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Tam also warned of a possible resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall and winter and said booster shots could help reduce severe outcomes and ease potential strain on the health system.
The National Immunization Advisory Committee has advised jurisdictions to prepare to offer a new round of vaccines to people at increased risk of severe disease from COVID-19, regardless of the number of booster doses they have already received. This includes people 65 and older, residents of long-term care or residential facilities, and people 12 and older with an underlying medical condition that puts them at high risk of severe COVID-19.
Neither Health Minister Adrian Dix nor provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry were available for an interview Thursday. Henry told CBC’s On The Coast last week that remaining stocks of COVID-19 vaccines in British Columbia are a priority for the estimated 1.2 million eligible people who have not yet received a booster shot.
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“All adults should get that third dose,” Henry said. “There are about 1.2 million people in British Columbia who received two doses but did not receive the first booster dose. I would encourage people to do that now so that we use this vaccine before it expires and really focus on the fourth dose, that extra boost, for those people who really need it.
Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver Center for Infectious Diseases, said while he agrees the priority should be to give the third dose to millions of British Columbians, the province’s announcements about the fourth dose are out of step with others provinces and as a result, is confusing.
Ontario, for example, offers fourth doses to people aged 60 and over and Indigenous people over 18, as long as it’s been at least three months since their first booster dose. In Quebec, anyone over 18 can get a fourth stroke.
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“I think it’s important that public health authorities at the national level, through provincial and territorial leadership, come together and try to reach some kind of consensus.” It will be less confusing,” Conway said. “I think the risk of the current piecemeal approach to fourth doses is that it reduces confidence in the vaccine program as a whole.”
Nine percent of Canadians, or about 2.9 million people, have received both of the COVID-19 booster shots, according to data from the Public Health Agency of Canada. About 44 percent of Canadians age 70 and older have received all four vaccines.
Compared to other provinces and territories, British Columbia has the second-lowest percentage of people immunized with four doses – just over five per cent, the figures show.
BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau said that with hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses nearing their expiration dates, the government’s approach defies logic.
“If there are hundreds of thousands of vaccines (doses) ready to be thrown out by this government, it doesn’t make sense for them not to provide these four doses to the people who want them,” she said. With files from The Canadian Presskderosa@postmedia.com
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