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Ballem will be charged with coordinating across various provincial sectors, said Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Provincial Health Officer, “whether it’s business or government or municipalities to help support us being able to equitably and rapidly provide this protection to as many of our community members as possible.”
The aim remains to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 by September. “It’s a mammoth task,” Ballem said, but it can be done.
Roughly 25,000 residents were vaccinated weekly through December and January, Health Minister Adrian Dix said. This number is expected to nearly triple by February, when the province aims to deliver 68,400 doses a week.
By the end of March, B.C. expects to receive 792,000 vaccinations in total.
B.C.’s most vulnerable communities will continue to be the focus of provincial health teams, but large-scale vaccinations are set to begin in April, when the province anticipates another 2.6 million doses — their share of the 20 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine ordered by the federal government this week.
By July, Dix said, B.C. intends to deliver 461,438 doses, or nearly half a million immunizations per week — a number that does not include additional vaccines expected to hit the market in short order.
