As COVID-19 vaccine supplies ramp up across the country, most provinces and territories have released details of who can expect to receive a shot in the coming weeks. Here’s a list of their plans to date:
Newfoundland and Labrador
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The province says it is in Phase 1 of its vaccine rollout. Health-care workers on the front lines of the pandemic, staff at long-term care homes, people of “advanced age” and adults in remote or isolated Indigenous communities have priority.
Newfoundland and Labrador announced March 3 it was extending the interval between the first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to four months.
Public health officials said the change will help them vaccinate 40,000 more people with a single dose by the end of March. Liberal Leader and incumbent Premier Andrew Furey said the decision is a game changer for the province’s vaccination prospects.
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Nova Scotia
Health officials in Nova Scotia announced March 2 that vaccination rollout plans for the month included the province’s first pharmacy clinics. Prototype pharmacy clinics will launch in Halifax and Shelburne on March 9, Port Hawkesbury on March 16 and Springhill on March 23.
Nova Scotia plans to have vaccine available to at least 75 per cent of the population by the end of September 2021.
Health officials said March 3 the upcoming shipment must be used by April 2 and therefore all 13,000 doses will be administered to residents across the province aged 50 to 64 years starting March 15.
The vaccine will be given out at 26 locations in Nova Scotia on a first come, first served basis.
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Prince Edward Island
Health officials in Prince Edward Island say they will shift their focus to getting a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine to all adults by July 1, even if it means delaying the second shot for some.
Chief medical officer Heather Morrison has said people over the age of 80 will get a second dose based on their existing appointments. Going forward, she said, other residents will get a longer interval between their first and second doses, but she didn’t specific how long that will be.
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New Brunswick
The province is also focusing on vaccinating those living in long-term care homes, health-care workers with direct patient contact, adults in First Nations communities and older New Brunswickers in the first phase, which lasts until at least March.
The next phase is scheduled to begin in the spring and includes residents and staff of communal settings, other health-care workers including pharmacists, first responders and critical infrastructure employees.
The government website says once the vaccine supply is continuous and in large enough quantities, the entire population will be offered the shots.
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Quebec
Quebec started vaccinating older seniors March 1, after a first phase that focused largely on health-care workers, remote communities and long-term care. In Montreal, mass vaccine sites including the Olympic Stadium opened their doors to the public as the province began inoculating seniors who live in the hard-hit city.
The government announced late last month it would begin booking appointments for those aged 85 and up across the province, but that age limit has since dropped to 70 in some regions, including Montreal.
Quebec announced March 2 it had reached a deal with pharmacies that will allow them to start administering COVID-19 vaccines by mid-March.
Health Minister Christian Dube said about 350 pharmacies in the Montreal area will start taking appointments by March 15 for people as young as 70. The program will eventually expand to more than 1,400 pharmacies across the province that will administer about two million doses.
The Montreal region is being prioritized in part because of the presence of more contagious variants, such as the one first identified in the United Kingdom, Dube has said.
Quebec says it will administer the newly approved Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to seniors, despite Canada’s national vaccine expert panel recommending against its use for people over the age of 65.
The province’s vaccine expert committee is recommending that all approved vaccines be used immediately to prevent deaths and hospitalizations, the Health Department said March 8, adding that the AstraZeneca vaccine “provides more flexibility in immunization efforts, especially for priority groups aged 70 to 79.”
The newly approved vaccine has numerous advantages, the Health Department said, including the fact it doesn’t need to be kept frozen and can be used up to 48 hours after a vial is opened. “Its use will also be favoured for (patients) where mobile vaccination is an optimal strategy to reach them — at home, for example.”
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Ontario
Ontario has given its first vaccines to people in long-term care, high-risk retirement home residents, some health-care workers and people who live in congregate care settings.
The provincial government has said it aims to begin vaccinating Ontarians aged 80 and older starting the week of March 15, the same day it plans to launch its vaccine booking system, which will include a service desk and online portal.
It said the vaccine rollout will look different in each of its 34 public health units. Several regions in Ontario have moved ahead with their plans to vaccinate the general public using their own booking systems to allow residents aged 80 and older to schedule appointments.
The province has also said it will extend the interval between doses of COVID-19 vaccines to up to four months.
Toronto began vaccinating police force members who respond to emergency calls on March 1 and has also started offering vaccines to people experiencing homelessness. Solicitor General Sylvia Jones has said the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will go to residents between the ages of 60 and 64, but has not elaborated yet on how it will be distributed except to say it won’t be through mass immunization sites.
The province has said it will follow the advice of a national panel that has recommended against using the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot on people aged 65 and older.
The health minister said the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot could be used in correctional facilities, but further details haven’t been released.
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Manitoba
Manitoba is starting to vaccinate people in the general population. Appointments are now available for most people aged 94 and up, or 74 and up for First Nations people. Until now, vaccines have been directed to certain groups such as health-care workers and people in personal care homes. Health officials plan to reduce the age minimum, bit by bit, over the coming months.
Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead of the province’s vaccine task force, has said inoculations could be open to all adults in the province by August if supplies are steady.
Like British Columbia, Manitoba has already indicated it would opt for a four-month interval between doses.
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Saskatchewan
The province is still in the first phase of its vaccination rollout, which reserves doses for long-term care residents and staff, health-care workers at elevated risk of COVID-19 exposure, seniors over the age of 70 and anyone 50 or older living in a remote area. In all, nearly 400,000 doses are required to finish this stage.
The next phase will be focused on vaccinating the general population by age.
It hopes to begin its mass vaccination campaign by April, but there if there isn’t enough supply that could be pushed back to June. Saskatchewan will begin immunizing the general population in 10-year increments, starting with those 60 to 69. Also included in this age group will be people living in emergency shelters, individuals with intellectual disabilities in care homes and people who are medically vulnerable.
Police, corrections staff and teachers are among the front-line workers not prioritized for early access to shots. The government says supply is scarce.
Premier Scott Moe said Thursday that people will get their second shot up to four months after the first, which falls in line with a recentrecommendation from Canada’s national immunization committee.
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Alberta
Alberta’s health minister says 437,000 people can soon begin booking appointments for the next round of COVID-19 vaccinations and the province hopes to hit a major milestone before July.
Tyler Shandro said the province expects to offer all Albertans aged 18 and over a first dose of vaccine by the end of June.
So far, Alberta has delivered 266,000 doses of vaccine. About 176,000 Albertans have been vaccinated, including 90,000 fully immunized with the recommended two doses.
Shandro said residents aged 65 to 74, and First Nations, Inuit and Metis aged 50-plus, can begin booking March 15. The province had originally not expected to begin this stage of vaccination until April.
The AstraZeneca vaccine will for now be offered to adults aged 50 to 64 who don’t have a severe chronic illness.
Alberta has also said it will follow other provinces by extending the time between the first dose and the second to four months.
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British Columbia
British Columbia will extend the time between the first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines to four months so all adults could get their initial shot by the end of July.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says evidence from the province and around the world shows protection of at least 90 per cent from the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
The province launched the second phase of its immunization campaign March 1 and health authorities will begin contacting residents and staff of independent living centres, those living in seniors’ supportive housing as well as homecare support clients and staff.
Seniors aged 90 and up can call to make their appointment starting next Monday, followed a week later by those aged 85 and over, and a week after that by those 80 and up.
Henry says the approval of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine means some people will get their first shot sooner than planned.
She says B.C. will focus its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine among essential workers, first responders and younger people with more social interactions who would have to wait longer to receive their first doses of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
It’s now possible that all adults could get their first shot by July, Henry says.
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Nunavut
The territory says it expects enough vaccines for 75 per cent of its population over the age of 18.
After a COVID-19 vaccine is administered, patients will be tracked to ensure they are properly notified to receive their second dose.
Nunavut’s priority populations are being vaccinated first. They include residents of shelters, people ages 60 years and up, staff and inmates and correctional facilities, first responders and front-line health-care staff.
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Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories its priority groups — such as people over 60, front-line health workers and those living in remote communities — are being vaccinated
The territory says it expects to vaccine the rest of its adult population starting this month.
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Yukon
Yukon says it will receive enough vaccine to immunize 75 per cent of its adult population by the end of March.
Priority for vaccinations has been given to residents and staff in long-term care homes, group homes and shelters, as well as health-care workers and personal support workers. People over the age of 80 who are not living in long-term care, and those living in rural and remote communities, including Indigenous Peoples, are also on the priority list for shots.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 9, 2021.
The World Health Organization has raised concerns about the spread of H5N1 bird flu, which has an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate in humans.
An outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions of poultry. Most recently, the spread of the virus within several mammal species, including in domestic cattle in the US, has increased the risk of spillover to humans, the WHO said.
“This remains I think an enormous concern,” the UN health agency’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, told reporters in Geneva.
Cows and goats joined the list of species affected last month – a surprising development for experts because they were not thought susceptible to this type of influenza. US authorities reported this month that a person in Texas was recovering from bird flu after being exposed to dairy cattle, with 16 herds across six states infected apparently after exposure to wild birds.
The A(H5N1) variant has become “a global zoonotic animal pandemic”, Farrar said.
“The great concern of course is that in … infecting ducks and chickens and then increasingly mammals, that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans and then critically the ability to go from human to human,” he added.
So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 is spreading between humans. But in the hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, “the mortality rate is extraordinarily high”, Farrar said, because humans have no natural immunity to the virus.
From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases and 463 deaths caused by H5N1 have been reported worldwide from 23 countries, according to the WHO, putting the case fatality rate at 52%.
The recent US case of human infection after contact with an infected mammal highlights the increased risk. When “you come into the mammalian population, then you’re getting closer to humans”, Farrar said, warning that “this virus is just looking for new, novel hosts”.
Farrar called for increased monitoring, saying it was “very important understanding how many human infections are happening … because that’s where adaptation [of the virus] will happen”.
“It’s a tragic thing to say, but if I get infected with H5N1 and I die, that’s the end of it,” he said. “If I go around the community and I spread it to somebody else then you start the cycle.”
He said efforts were under way towards the development of vaccines and therapeutics for H5N1, and stressed the need to ensure that regional and national health authorities around the world had the capacity to diagnose the virus.
This was being done so that “if H5N1 did come across to humans, with human-to-human transmission”, the world would be “in a position to immediately respond”, Farrar said, calling for equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
“I’m not saying it’s society’s problem, but there should be recognition of the load that caregivers are taking.”
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Published Apr 18, 2024 • Last updated 7 hours ago • 4 minute read
Dr Lisa Walker is co-chair of the Enhancing Access to Care conference on Saturday.Photo by Ottawa Brain and Mind Research Institute /Handout
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When former CEO Bruce Wood was diagnosed with young onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, he made a point of talking publicly about the illness to help others. When he could no longer do so, that duty fell to his wife, Lisa Raitt.
The former senior federal cabinet minister, lawyer and mother has made speaking about her husband’s illness part of her busy life, even when it is difficult, which it often is. She sees it as a duty to help people better understand the disease and to support caregivers like her.
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“I always accept these invitations.”
Raitt will be keynote speaker at an Ottawa conference this weekend aimed at helping patients and their caregivers navigate the often complex systems of care once they are diagnosed with neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.
The Enhancing Access to Care conference, sponsored by the University of Ottawa’s Brain and Mind Research Institute, will include sessions on barriers to accessing care for rural residents, the latest research for neurodegenerative illnesses, including Parkinson’s disease and dementia, information on the regional geriatric program and Raitt’s talk on the challenges of care for young-onset Alzheimer’s.
The conference is a recognition of the difficulties patients and their caregivers can have accessing the help they need.
Wood was diagnosed when he was 56 and Raitt was 47. It was a shock. Raitt said she wanted people to think about the fact that “sometimes it’s Alzheimer’s” — meaning possible symptoms shouldn’t be dismissed just because of a person’s age.
In the early days after his diagnoses, Wood’s disease seemed to move slowly, she said, and they were able to travel and “do all of our bucket-list things.” But then it progressed and life became increasingly difficult.
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“We had a very specific set of circumstances where Bruce was becoming very combative, not just aggressive, but aggressive that was threatening to our lives in the house. When you are in it, you can’t negotiate because you are drowning and just trying to keep your head up.”
Raitt said she thought it was important that people hear the realities of the disease “because I am not the only one who is going through this or went through this. I believe there’s an obligation for me to at least give some kind of colour to the reality so that others can recognize it.”
Wood is now in a long-term care home, something Raitt says she fought “with every fibre.” She acknowledges he is receiving better care than he could receive at home and that she probably waited too long to do so.
“I think what could have helped me is somebody saying they are better off in a long-term care facility because he gets better care than I could have provided.”
Raitt said she also hoped members of the medical community heard her story to start to think about the possibility of young onset Alzheimer’s when a patient had symptoms that might include increasing problems with planning, problem solving, attention and emotions.
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Wife, mother, lawyer and former MP and cabinet minister Lisa Raitt will be keynote speaker at the Enhancing Access to Care conference on Saturday.Photo by Ottawa Brain and Mind Research Institute /Handout
She also noted that the vast majority of caregivers, like her, are women. Raitt, a lawyer, belonged to a support group of caregivers in similar circumstances and says almost all of them decided to retire early because of the pressures of caring on top of their work.
“I didn’t have the choice to retire. I’ve got two kids in university and a husband with special needs. That takes extra cash — and I continue to work for my own sanity, too” she said. “But the reality is caregivers are the ones taking a load off society and society couldn’t function without us. I’m not saying it’s society’s problem, but there should be recognition of the load that caregivers are taking.”
The conference, which will be held Saturday at the RA Centre, is aimed at people with neurological conditions and their care partners. In addition to presentations, organizations will be on-site to offer information about other services available in the community, including from traditionally marginalized group “who might not know there are services specific to their needs,” said Dr. Lisa Walker, a clinical neuropsychologist who is co-lead of the uOttawa Brain and Mind Research Institute’s neurodegeneration pillar.
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It is the first event of its kind for the University of Ottawa Brain and Mind Research Institute. Typically, events are geared toward research, Walker said.
It is difficult living with neurodegenerative conditions, she said, and can be a daunting task to access care. Sometimes, it is available, but people don’t know how to find it.
She said the shortage of family doctors was an added burden for people to understand the supports available in the community. “There are many excellent services that people can access, but they don’t know they exist and can’t access them.”
Among them are services through the regional geriatric program and the Dementia Society of Ottawa and Renfrew County. One of the speakers will talk about Ontario 211, a help line to help people access social services, programs and community supports.
Walker said the conference would also address the burden on informal caregivers, as family members and friends who care for loved ones are called.
“It is a huge burden of care, both from a practical standpoint and an emotional standpoint.”
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Newfoundland and Labrador’s top doctor is warning people to stay up to date on whooping cough vaccinations after a small increase in cases this year.
The province usually sees three to four cases of the disease annually. Up to 10 cases have been reported already since January, however, prompting the province’s chief medical officer to raise the issue publicly.
The increase “generally means there’s a little bit more circulating in the community than what’s presenting for care and testing,” Dr. Janice Fitzgerald said Tuesday.
While officials aren’t overly concerned about a future spike in cases, Fitzgerald said, higher infection rates place infants in particular at risk.
Children under the age of one aren’t yet old enough for the whooping cough vaccine and don’t have immunity to the disease, Fitzgerald said. Infections in small children can be more severe and lead to pneumonia, neurological issues and hospitalization.
Fitzgerald said parents, grandparents and caregivers should check to ensure their vaccinations are up to date.
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, causes a persistent nagging cough that’s sometimes severe enough to cause vomiting. Vaccines for the disease are offered in early childhood, during high school and in adulthood. Booster shots should be given 10 years after the high school dose, Fitzgerald said.
“Immunity can wane over time,” she said. “Pertussis does circulate on a regular basis in our community.”
The small increase in cases isn’t yet ringing alarm bells for undervaccination within the general population, she added, noting the province still has a vaccination rate over 90 per cent.
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