Dr. Bonnie Henry answers questions at 42:15:

• Limited vaccine in Q1 of Pfizer-BioNTech – under 10% of BC population
• We need to vaccinate 60-75% of our population for herd immunity
• Focus to protect our healthcare system and provide health services
• Started with people who work in long-term care because we were not able to move the Pfizer vaccine
• Now, we have the specific directions and we can move the vaccine into the long-term care homes in the province as well as key healthcare workers
• Astrazenaca and Johnson&Johnson vaccines will not be in BC until Q2 (April) – much more usable in terms of temperature (fridge-stable) We will start with the larger community when these are available

Second Dose question – 21 days for Pfizer/28 days for Moderna

• Minimum intervals and rarely maximum doses
• Committed to everybody getting a 2nd dose
• BC Immunization Committee and National Advisory Committee on Immunization
• Moderna and Pfizer – 2 weeks after the first dose is 85% protection
• 2 weeks after 2nd dose it goes up to 95%
• Pfizer – outside edge = 48 days / Moderna – outside edge = 50 days (no dimunation in effect)
• Pfizer recommended ideal timeframe = 28 days / Moderna = 35 days
• Delay a dose for most vaccines, that gives you a stronger and longer lasting effect, but there isn’t data for that for these vaccines. Real probability that there will be a similar effect with these vaccines
• 50:15 – Operational issues – vaccine is backend loaded – small doses in the first few weeks and more in the later months (Feb / March)
• Keep doses in fridges if we went with the strict 21 days
• Balance of evidence in terms of protecting people – very high protection from 1st dose and that we will be able to
• Ethical review, data, modelling, how much are we expecting to get at what time
• We made the decision that 35 days will be the standard – people who received first dose in December will get their 2nd vaccine in that timeframe
• Protect more people in this most infectious time