TORONTO —
With new cases of COVID-19 variants being confirmed across Canada, some experts say achieving herd immunity is no longer possible, or may require a much higher percentage of the population being vaccinated than previously thought.
Experts say herd immunity is achieved when most of a country’s population — estimates vary from 60 to 80 per cent — have acquired defences against a virus, whether through vaccination or because they caught the disease and survived.
The specific percentage threshold hasn’t been settled on in Canada, but Health Canada’s chief medical adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma previously told the House of Commons health committee that vaccination rates will likely have to be even higher than the popular estimates to ensure those who cannot get vaccinated are protected.
“Now with the emergence of variants and because they are more transmissible, I think a lot of people are adjusting those numbers up towards more like 85 per cent, or even potentially 90 per cent coverage to achieve herd immunity,” Sharma said.
“Certainly it’s a moving target, because as we know, the virus and its transmissibility and how contagious it is, is changing,” she added.
Jeff Kwong, an epidemiologist with the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, told CTVNews.ca on Thursday that reaching herd immunity in Canada is still possible, but “what level of immunity needed to achieve that is uncertain.”
“With the new variants being more transmissible, we will likely need higher levels of immunity in the population to have herd immunity,” Kwong said in an email.
He estimates that the immunity threshold would likely be somewhere around 80 per cent of the population being vaccinated.
Canada has reached herd immunity before against other diseases, such as the measles. However, experts aren’t so sure the same will happen with the novel coronavirus.
Eleanor Fish, a senior immunologist with the Toronto-based University Health Network, says there are a variety factors impacting herd immunity beyond just vaccination rates, including asymptomatic transmission, the extended time between vaccine doses, and the level of protection Canadians previously infected with COVID-19 have against new variants.
“So guestimating herd immunity with all these moving parts — it’s nigh on impossible from my perspective,” Fish said in an email.
Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious disease expert and the director of global and Indigenous health at the University of Toronto, says achieving herd immunity is no longer possible because Canada isn’ vaccinating all of its residents
She explained in a telephone interview on Thursday that Canada is not currently vaccinating children, leaving out a major portion of the entire population.
“To have herd immunity, you have to have a large percentage of the population vaccinated, and that includes the whole population — anyone susceptible to COVID — so that includes children,” Banerji said.
“As long as you have children not vaccinated, the virus can go to children, it can spread through them, they can act as a reservoir to come back and infect people,” she added.
While herd immunity may still seem like an achievable goal to some, Banerji said the focus should be on vaccinating as many Canadians as possible.
“Whoever gets the vaccine has a much, much reduced risk of getting COVID, but also a greatly reduced risk of getting severely sick from COVID, ending up in the hospital and dying from it. For each individual that gets vaccinated, that reduces the risk of them getting it, but also the people around them,” Banerji said.
She added that ramping up vaccinations will also subsequently limit the spread of more contagious variants.
“If there are a lot of people with COVID and a lot of virus out there, then it’s more likely that the virus is going to mutate, but if people are mostly vaccinated, then it slows down the mutation,” Banerji explained.
WHAT HAPPENS IF HERD IMMUNITY IS ACHIEVED?
Even if herd immunity is achieved, Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo has said that the easing of public health restrictions won’t immediately happen.
He said returning to normal will depend on more than the percentage of people who are vaccinated, including the number of hospitalizations and the number of variant cases across the country.
“At this point, no one knows how many people need to be vaccinated, you know, what might be the sufficient level of vaccine coverage to get herd immunity, so that’s why I think we can’t just rely on vaccination,” Njoo said.
Public health officials have signalled that even when vaccines become widespread, there will need to be precautionary measures like frequent hand-washing, physical distancing and mask-wearing in place for some time.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get back to what normal was, you know, pre-COVID, I think it’d be a different kind of what normal is,” said Njoo.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
