Only about 13 per cent of New Brunswickers aged five and older have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose in the past five months, according to figures from the Department of Health.
That’s around 100,000 people who have received a recent booster — meaning a third dose or more.
New Brunswick is not currently offering spring boosters to the general population. Only those considered most at risk for severe illness are eligible for the additional doses, available at community pharmacies across the province until the end of June.
There are about 209,000 of these people, as of last week, according to department spokesperson Sean Hatchard.
As of Tuesday, a total of 30.5 per cent of eligible New Brunswickers have received a second COVID-19 booster, and 54.8 per cent have received a first booster. (Lukas Barth/Reuters)
They include people who had their last COVID-19 vaccine dose or SARS-CoV-2 infection more than five months ago and are:
Aged 65 and over, especially if unsure whether they’ve already been infected.
Aged 18 and over who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.
Living in long-term care facilities.
“Individuals who already received a booster dose last fall are considered fully up to date, and no further doses are recommended at this time,” the department has said, even though some of those people would already be beyond the usual five-month interval.
People aged five or older who have not yet received their fall booster dose can still get it throughout the spring.
There’s no way to estimate how many of the roughly 677,000 New Brunswickers aged five and older who haven’t had a dose in the last five months have natural immunity following a previous COVID infection, Hatchard said.
“No jurisdiction in the world would be able to provide exact percentages,” he said in an emailed statement.
Some people who fall ill choose not to test for the virus, Hatchard noted, while others who do test positive may not report their results to their public health agency, or seek medical care.
“That makes it impossible for this province or any other jurisdiction to know the exact number of residents that have been infected, and that would have some natural immunity from those infections.”
Epidemiologist predicts ‘unfortunate trajectory’
Still, three experts CBC spoke to worry restricting spring boosters could spell trouble for the province.
“I think you’re really kind of locking in a very, very unfortunate trajectory for the population,” said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto.
Infection control epidemiologist Colin Furness contends vaccination rates have dropped off due to a ‘communications failure’ on the part of Public Health officials. People believed it was a two-dose vaccine and officials should have better explained the virus changed and so did vaccine requirements. (CBC)
He doesn’t expect it will make a “big difference” in terms of spread because the pandemic has reached a fairly sustained level of infections and vaccines have “limited usefulness” in preventing transmission.
“But what you’re going to do is you’re going to fail to reduce the incidence of severe illness, and you are going to fail to reduce the incidence of long COVID.”
Rod Russell, a professor of immunology and virology at Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador, also thinks it’s a mistake not to offer spring boosters to the general population.
“I don’t see a scientific reason for it, unless I’m missing something,” he said.
Memorial University virologist Rod Russell said people’s confidence in boosters dropped as new variants became better at evading immunity, and many people who got infected and ‘didn’t get that sick’ think they don’t need a booster, but the vaccine will still help protect them, and others, from severe illness. (Gary Locke/CBC)
Russell contends it will lead to more virus circulating in the community.
“That’s a risk and a concern for sure, because if no one’s getting vaccinated, then, you know, six months later, [once immunity wanes], we’re all susceptible to infection and we’re all potential spreaders.”
The people who end up infected could be those who are most vulnerable to severe illness, said Russell. Even if they’re boosted, they might not have had a good immune response to the vaccine, but previously avoided infection because they weren’t exposed, he said.
‘Not ideal’
His colleague Michael Grant, a professor of immunology at Memorial University, agrees.
There will probably be more cases in the population, more opportunity for the virus to spread and more potential exposures of people who are vulnerable with a lower baseline level of vaccination in general population, he said.
If “enough people get infected, some people are going to get seriously ill. And if enough people get infected, there’s a greater chance that people that are vulnerable also get infected.
“So it’s certainly not an ideal situation.”
Michael Grant, a professor of immunology, would like to see jurisdictions offer testing for immunity. As it stands, people assume the vaccines are working, but some people don’t have good immune responses to the shot, and if people know their immunity is low, he contends they would be more likely to get a booster. (Submitted by Michael Grant)
NACI did not recommend an additional spring booster for people in the general population who’ve already received all their previous recommended doses.
Move toward annual booster
Russell said he doesn’t see the harm in letting people get an additional dose, if they want one, and questions whether costs are a factor. It takes staff, time and resources to administer vaccines.
He suspects public health officials in many jurisdictions are trying to move toward an annual COVID booster. Virus levels tend to decrease in the summer when people spend more time outdoors, so they may want to wait until the fall, the start of respiratory season, when they pick up again, he said.
Russell hopes cases do drop during the summer, but says COVID is difficult to predict.
“I thought it would have settled into a more of a seasonal schedule by now, but it it hasn’t.”
Grant said there is “no doubt” COVID is still spreading. But people don’t hear about it as much as they used to through the media, and there is a “huge underestimate” of cases, based on self-reported rapid tests and limits on who can get PCR lab tests.
That, combined with Omicron being generally less virulent, has resulted in a “general level of complacency,” he said.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
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