Vaccination: Quebec is among the world champions

The vaccination path has been a bumpy ride for governments in Canada, especially in January and February, when supplies from Europe slowed. But since mid-March, health officials across the country have vaccinated one of the fastest rates in the world, pushing Canada to rise in the global rankings. And in this list, Quebec stands out.

This week, Quebec took a symbolic step More than one in three people They received at least their first dose of the vaccine. The administration of the second dose to healthcare workers and residents of CHSLDs is also accelerating.

To try to find out where Quebec and the major Canadian provinces are in their vaccination campaign compared to the rest of the world, I used numbers Oxford universityWhich has been a standard since the start of the epidemic. I then removed lands of less than one million people, in order to compare similar logistical and sourcing efforts. Monaco, with a population of 39,000, has a less complex management of its vaccination campaign than the United States and its population of 331 million, for example.

Once the calculations are completed, Quebec … the drum drum … ranks eighth on the planet in administering the first dose!

Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom have formed a steady platform since the start of global vaccination efforts in December. The United States and Chile are following closely. Quebec, whose population 33.7% of its population has received at least one dose, ranks eighth, but we can see that the Canadian provinces with populations of over 1 million are doing well. Despite criticism, especially in Ontario in recent weeks, the vaccination machine is very effective in Canada in general.

Canada was able to raise the rating for two reasons: The vaccine supply has been steady and more abundant in recent weeks, especially from Pfizer, and provinces have chosen to delay administering the vaccine by four months. The second dose, on the advice of public health authorities, to quickly immunize as many people as possible. Quebec was also the first province to give this signal by extending the interval between two doses of vaccines in February, as had the United Kingdom shortly before that. And with good reason: protection with a single dose is still very good, more than 80% after the two to four weeks after inoculation with the RNA vaccine Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna, which was spotted last winter by the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ). With 33,000 residents of CHSLDs and 173,000 health workers in the Quebec network.

The scarcity of vaccines and the arrival of a third wave of infections to them Health authorities were forced to recommend this scenario, in order to reduce infection. Moreover, most countries did not follow manufacturers ’recommendations that recommend injecting the two doses over a period of 21 or 28 days. The United Kingdom, for example, chose a 12-week gap, France chose 6 weeks, and Belgium chose the 35-day gap. In Europe, an increasing number of public health authorities are separating the two injections.

The first dose given to more people will help slow the spread of disease and increase protection for the most vulnerable while waiting for the right amount of vaccine to speed up the injection of second doses this summer, when manufacturers increase production.

The vaccination campaign in Quebec will accelerate again, as large companies begin to vaccinate their employees, their families, and the local community. Quebec will receive 60,000 doses of a single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson next week, and the United States will send out a new shipment of AstraZeneca in the coming days.

It is possible that 75% of Quebec residents over the age of 16 will be vaccinated even before the June 24 date set by the Quebec government – if the expected doses are present.

If we look at the same ranking of countries and territories with populations of more than one million, but only considering the proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, i.e. two doses, Canada and Quebec are far from the top ten. A two-dose vaccination strategy.

Going back to normal scenarios, the proportion of people vaccinated with both doses is significant. The Federal Public Health estimates that in order to significantly ease health restrictions, 75% of the adult population will need to receive their first dose, and 20%, the second.

As for Quebec, on June 24, the first goal will be met, faster than most countries in the world, but only between 6% and 10% of the population will be fully immune at this time. It will likely reach 20% sometime in July, unless you introduce the second dose largely due to the abundance of vaccines in June.

In any case, the success of the vaccination campaign so far allows us to predict a quieter summer than winter and last spring, and a completely different autumn.