If all goes to plan, B.C.’s top doctor expects to have everyone in the province who wants a COVID-19 vaccine to be able get it by Sept. 2021.
Dr. Bonnie Henry says there will be limited doses available at first, which is why seniors and healthcare workers will be first in line to get immunized. That first round of immunizations could begin in the first week of January.
“As long as the vaccine continues to come in, as long as the safety and the effectiveness is good, we expect there will be a good lot of people who will be immunized by the summer and through the fall next year,” Henry said. “Once we have more vaccine available, we will be making it available to all of us in British Columbia.
“That’s when we can get to that point of managing and controlling this pandemic. All of our planning constructs is to have everybody done by September of next year.”
Earlier this week, Henry noted an provincial vaccination team was set up – led by Dr. Ross Brown, the vice-president of pandemic response for Vancouver Coastal Health – with plans to unveil a the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out plan early next week.
Henry though warns there will be limited supplies to begin with as only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are likely to be available early on. The Pfizer vaccine is being reviewed by Health Canada while the Moderna vaccine is in the process of getting a notice of compliance in Canada.
“We have about six million doses across the country of that vaccine that we expect to come through January through February through March,” she added. “That’s not enough for everybody.”
Henry noted two other vaccine candidates – one by AstraZeneca and the other by Janssen Inc., a pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson – should be more widely available in the second quarter of next year as the respective companies are in the process of submitting data to regulators around the world, including Health Canada.
“By the time we get into April of 2021, we’re expecting increased numbers of all the vaccines to be available,” Henry said. “That’s when we can start offering it to more people across British Columbia and across Canada, but it will take some time. We need to sequence as we go because we can’t do everybody at once.”
“By the end of [next] year, anybody who wants a vaccine in B.C. and in Canada should have it available to them.”
Henry has previously noted that she does not expect immunization against COVID-19 to be mandatory in the province, but she will be strongly recommending that workers in certain industries that have been hard hit get the vaccine when it is available.
“I know that we are waiting for these, particularly in those areas where people are most vulnerable and we can protect people very rapidly using these new vaccines that will be available very soon,” she added.
