Tuesday October 22, 2024 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
As weather gets cooler and people spend more time gathering indoors, the annual fall-winter respiratory season emerges.
Today BC Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry delivered her first respiratory illness season press conference.
Her primary message was that updated vaccines for COVID and influenza are available throughout BC.
COVID is endemic:
COVID is now endemic within the viral spectrum of disease in BC. Along with influenza and RSV each respiratory season is now about dealing with a trio of primary viral concerns.
COVID-19 no longer causes severe illness on the scale it once did — thanks in large part to immunization (as underscored by Dr Henry today), but the virus is likely not retreating.
However today it was not really new to hear Dr Henry say that COVID is not behaving in what might be considered a normal seasonal pattern. Cases of COVID were high in September, she noted, while influence and RSV (more typical of ‘flu season’) are starting to uptick now.
“We still don’t know enough about the patterns,” said Dr Henry today about behaviour of the COVID virus. There is undoubtedly another challenging season for all of us,” said Dr Henry today.
Still the Omicron strain:
The current predominant strain of COVID that is circulating is of the “Omicron era”, said Dr Henry today. More specifically, it is the KP.3.1.1.
KP.3.1.1 has overtaken its parent linage KP.3 and previous KP.2 variants.
Vaccines still provide protection “in the short term” against infection. If some has recently had a COVID infection they can wait up to three months to get the latest vaccine, as they will already be protected, according to Dr Henry today.
Immunization rollout started last week:
There certainly was a lot of election-related news taking up much of the news cycle bandwidth last week. This week there is more time and room for people to pay attention to the fall respiratory season news.
Dr Henry reported today that 141,522 COVID vaccinations were administered in Week One (starting October 15 to priority populations), as well as 228,252 influenza shots.
Invitations for immunizations for priority populations began October 8.
Invitations for getting the vaccines have been going out to British Columbians in recent days and weeks. All invitations for getting the vaccines will be completed by the first week of November, said Dr Henry today.
- October 15, 2024 was a record-breaking day for pharmacies with the highest number of vaccinations in a single day. On that day, BC pharmacies administered 81,859 vaccinations (49,425 for influenza and 32,434 for COVID-19).
- For the opening week starting October 15, 2024, 369,774 vaccines were administered, beating the previous total by 3,594 doses (366,180 last year). This represents 141,522 COVID-19 and 228,252 influenza doses in opening week among priority populations.
- These numbers of vaccinations broke the previous record set October 12, 2023. On that day, BC pharmacies administered 70,739 vaccinations (45,831 for influenza and 24,908 for COVID-19).
- BC has ordered 2.2 million doses of the updated COVID-19 vaccines and 2.3 million doses of the new influenza vaccine for the 2024-25 respiratory illness season, including enhanced influenza vaccines for seniors.
Still some opposition to vaccines:
The health management of influenza, COVID and RSV now has a political backdrop of an undecided BC election result (initial count does not produce a majority for any party).
If the BC Conservatives end up forming government, their stance is no vaccine mandates. Currently there are no mandates in place.
Today Dr Henry reminded media that her office is independent of government but that “if the party wants somebody who is more aligned with them” then that’s their choice. “My role is to protect everybody in BC,” Dr Henry told media today.
She acknowledges there are a few doctors who aren’t supportive of COVID vaccines.
Today Dr Henry mentioned that a protein-based vaccine (different from the mRNA vaccines) might become available in Canada.
But she reminds people that mRNA technology was many years in the making; the technology only became widely heard of during the pandemic and probably did seem suspiciously ‘fast’ to most people when mRNA-type COVID vaccines (by Pfizer and Moderna) were able to be market-ready within a year of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (named COVID-19 by the World Health Organization) emerging into the world.
Reflecting back:
“I’ve done a lot of reflection,” said Dr Henry today regarding how she and her team handled the COVID pandemic during 2020 to 2022. “All of us want this to be behind us,” she said.
“We did what we did to try to find this balance,” said Dr Henry, noting the impacts on families and individuals who missed out on important parts of their lives. She reminded media that this was “a time of uncertainty”. As with any respiratory virus keeping people separated would be the wise course of action (even though for most of her commentary during the pandemic she has never really called COVID an ‘airborne’ virus).
She was firm in her statement today tat it was immunization against COVID that provided protection that “got us through this pandemic”.
“My role was to find that balance,” said Dr Henry, who has received numerous accolades and many awards for her work in guiding BC through the pandemic. Health Minister Adrian Dix also receives much support from the broader political community for his role in guiding BC through the COVID pandemic.
Long-COVID:
Long-COVID is still being attended to by BC Health. There is one virtual clinic still active in BC. Dr Henry quickly defines long-COVID as a person having symptoms for three weeks or longer, including neurological symptoms and ‘brain fog’.
In 2020 she began to acknowledge long-COVID, especially among young adults who had not received the vaccine (they were left until last in the immunization priority queue).
Today Dr Henry noted that getting the COVID vaccine “even after the initial infection does provide protection from repeat infection by at least 50 percent”.
Updated vaccines available throughout BC:
Updated vaccines for COVID and influenza are available throughout BC. Everyone age 6 mo and older can get the vaccine. Prioritized groups include older people, the elderly in care homes, people who are immune compromised, and others.
Updated vaccines that protect against the latest influenza strains and COVID-19 variants circulating are available for people in BC to help protect families, communities and the health-care system.
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NEWS SECTIONS: HEALTH | COVID | BC ELECTION 2024