Healthcare workers prepare doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Woodbine Racetrack pop-up vaccine clinic in Toronto on May 5, 2021.CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters
It’s the question on the minds of a steadily increasing number of Canadians: I’ve gotten my first COVID-19 vaccination dose, and so have some of my friends and family members, so when can I start safely getting together with them?
It’s a complicated question, and the most honest answer is: Not any time too soon. Even though more than 15-million Canadians have received a first dose of Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca, and more than a million are fully vaccinated, the country is still in the grips of the pandemic’s third wave.
Alberta, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces are all struggling with surges in daily new cases. Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia are seeing counts slowly fall but still have a way to go before bringing COVID-19 under control.
Many provinces are still tightening restrictions, with good cause. Reopening businesses too soon, or allowing people to gather in large groups too quickly, could lead to a rebound in cases. Nobody wants another ride on that roller coaster.
Then again, nobody wants to spend a minute longer in isolation than they have to. Canadians are going to need guidance on safe behaviours, as the percentage of people who are partially vaccinated grows rapidly this month.
Canada vaccine tracker: How many COVID-19 doses have been administered so far?
More than two-million doses will be distributed to the provinces each week in May and June. On Thursday, more than 400,000 first and second doses were administered across Canada, a new high. In Toronto, officials expected that 50 per cent of the city’s adult population would have had one dose by the end of the weekend.
So what does that mean? Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, recently said the most restrictive measures, such as workplace and business closures, could be lifted once 75 per cent of adults have had a first dose, and at least 20 per cent of those are fully vaccinated.
Those figures stood at about 40 per cent and three per cent, respectively, on Friday. So there is a long way to go; it will likely be late June before those numbers are reached.
Fair enough. But somewhere lower down on the scale of severity of lockdown measures are lesser restrictions that could be eased for people who have received their first dose of vaccine, and who have waited four weeks for their resistance to COVID-19 to peak.
Those include the kinds of activities you would expect partially vaccinated Canadians to flirt with after a year of social isolation: Can my partner and I get together in our house with another vaccinated couple? Is it safe for a largish group of partially vaccinated people to gather in a backyard? Or are these still unwise activities?
There is a growing bank of evidence that first doses of vaccines are highly effective at preventing infection and hospitalizations. For instance, a study published last month in the medical journal Lancet looked at the real-world vaccine rollout in Scotland; it found that a single dose of Pfizer was 91 per cent effective at reducing hospitalizations, and a single dose of AstraZeneca was 88 per cent effective.
In Britain, more than 30-million people had received a first vaccine dose by the end of March; since then, case numbers have fallen dramatically, even as some restrictions were lifted.
Canada’s vaccine rollout has lagged those in other countries, but it is catching up. On the other hand, Ottawa and the provinces made the decision to focus on first doses, and to postpone second doses by up to four months, in order to get vaccines into as many arms as possible right away.
That means some of the things happening in countries that are able to give both doses on the manufacturers’ recommended schedule of four or five weeks don’t apply to Canada.
In the United States, for instance, where more than 100-million people are fully vaccinated, those with both doses are now allowed to resume domestic travel, and don’t have to be tested on departure and arrival, or quarantine at either end.
We are still months away from that luxury. But the easing of restrictions can’t be all or nothing this spring. In the absence of guidance from public health officials, it’s likely that many partially vaccinated Canadians will start making tentative forays out of their mandated bubbles – if they aren’t doing so already.
Should such activity be allowed, or should the partially vaccinated sit tight? They will need some clear rules to live by if Canada is going to bring the pandemic under control this summer.
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