Canada’s public health director said booster shots could help reduce serious illness if the country sees a resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall and winter.
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BC health officials’ firm decision to limit who receives the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine appears to be at odds with the advice of Canada’s chief medical officer.
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Despite constant pressure to change its stance, the province is administering the fourth dose only to people over 70, indigenous people over 55, and people in long-term care. Those people can get their fourth dose six months after their last booster.
Canada’s public health director Theresa Tam warned Thursday that there could be a spike in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks due to the circulation of highly transmissible Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which they evade immunity more than previous variants.
That’s why he urged those behind in his reinforcements to catch up now.
She and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos stressed the importance of up-to-date vaccination status, noting that 40% of Canadians have yet to receive a booster after their two main vaccinations, putting Canada behind than other G7 countries for all three doses. .
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Tam also warned of a possible resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall and winter, saying booster shots could help reduce serious outcomes and ease potential strain on the health care system.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization has advised jurisdictions to prepare to offer another round of vaccinations to people at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19, regardless of the number of booster doses they have already received. That includes people age 65 and older, residents of long-term care or residential facilities, and people age 12 and older with an underlying medical condition that places them at high risk for severe COVID-19.
Neither the Minister of Health, Adrian Dix, nor the Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, were available for an interview on Thursday. Henry told CBC’s On The Coast last week that the remaining stock of COVID-19 vaccines in BC is being prioritized for the roughly 1.2 million eligible people who have not yet received a booster shot.
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“All adults need to get that third dose,” Henry said. “There are about 1.2 million people in BC who have received two doses and have not received the first booster. I would encourage people to do that now so that we use this vaccine before it expires, and we really focus the fourth dose, that extra boost, on those people who really need it.”
Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver Center for Infectious Diseases, said that while he agrees the priority should be to give millions of British Columbians their third dose, the province’s message on the fourth dose is out of step with other provinces and, as a result, is confusing.
Ontario, for example, offers fourth doses to people 60 and older and indigenous people 18 and older as long as at least three months have passed since their first booster. In Quebec, anyone over the age of 18 can take a fourth jab.
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“I think it is important that public health authorities at the national level, through provincial and territorial leadership, come together and try to achieve some kind of consensus. That will be less confusing,” Conway said. “I think the risk of this current piecemeal approach to the fourth dose is that it decreases confidence in the vaccine program as a whole.”
Nine percent of Canadians, or about 2.9 million people, have received both 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 injections.
Compared to other provinces and territories, British Columbia has the second-lowest percentage of people immunized with four doses at just over 5 percent, the figures show.
BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau said that with hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses approaching their expiration date, the government’s approach defies logic.
“If there are hundreds of thousands of vaccines (doses) ready to be thrown away by this government, it makes no sense that they are not making those four doses available to people who want them,” he said.
With archives from The Canadian Press
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