B.C. pushing for more vaccine registration
Only 260,000 have signed up who haven't been jabbed, more needed to ease restrictions, expert says
The B.C. government is trying to hammer home the message that more people need to register for a COVID-19 vaccination.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix implored last week: “Register. Register. Register.”
There's a reason for that, not visible in the information the B.C. NDP government has been providing publicly
Of the more than 21/2 million people who have registered for a vaccine, only 260,000 were still waiting for a jab as of May 11, the latest information the province was able to provide in response to a Postmedia request.
B.C. Health Ministry officials say on average another 50,000 people are registering a day (they did not say whether that number is rising or falling). But more than that are being vaccinated, about 159,000 a day last Wednesday and Thursday.
While it's only a snap shot in time, the number of people registered and not vaccinated is not enough to get British Columbia to the number of vaccinations required to significantly ease restrictions, says epidemiologist Sarah Otto. More than a million more British Columbians need to register for a vaccination and receive one in order to get to those safety levels, said Otto, who specializes in mathematical modelling.
Also Friday, authorities said there had been 494 more cases of COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours in B.C. and two more deaths for a pandemic total of 1,634 deaths.
As of Friday, more than 2.2 million British Columbians have had a first vaccine dose.
Otto, who is a member of an independent COVID-19 modelling group in B.C., said the 260,000 people registered but waiting for a jab was a lower number than she expected. The registry has been open to all British Columbians since early April.
“I think we're going to turn from people scrambling to find a vaccine to the reverse, and the vaccinators having to scramble to find people,” said Otto. “And I think that is going to happen in the next two weeks.”
According to a recent Angus Reid poll, nine per cent of British Columbians said they won't get a COVID-19 vaccine and five per cent were not sure. That leaves 86 per cent of people who would prospectively get a vaccine, in the range of what is needed to provide community level protection from COVID-19, according to scientists.
But other recent Canadian surveys have found only two thirds of Canadians want to get a vaccine. And in the U.S., vaccine rollout has appeared to stall as demand for vaccines has dropped with about 50 per cent of the population with one jab and another 36 per cent with two doses.
“How is the government going to put vaccines into (British Columbian's) arms by mid June, when they don't know where they are,” said Otto of the more than one million who need to register.
Otto said this type of information — the buffer the province has before it runs out of people signed up for a jab — is important for the public to know.
It could provide more incentive to get people registered, she said.
According to data released by the province on age groups that have been vaccinated, of particular concern would be younger age groups just now becoming eligible to book vaccine appointments.
The B.C. government took days to release the information requested by Postmedia, and only after repeated requests, even though the province has come under criticism for not being transparent with data it holds.
After the four days it took to release the information on Friday, B.C. health officials said the information was stale and changing every day.
Alberta health officials provided information to a similar Postmedia request within three hours on Thursday. It showed there were 580,000
Albertans signed up and waiting for a jab in the next 14 days and 800,000 in the next month.
Heidi Tworek, a University of B.C. public policy and history associate professor who has studied government communications during the pandemic, said there seems little reason the government would not release this information.
She also said it could prove useful in helping encourage people to register and act as a measure of the goal that needs to be reached, said Tworek.