I don't really get the desire to criticize NS on the vaccine rollout. Some thoughts... 1/ https://twitter.com/gshotwell/status/1354890477993136134
To begin, the provincial government has no control over how many doses of vaccine get delivered to the province. 2/
And the early deliveries will be minuscule — maybe 140,000 doses through April. 3/
The health dept. people in charge of the program — all very capable people — have rightly planned to a 2-prong approach: 4/
1. These early doses will go to healthcare workers, nursing homes residents & staff, and very old people in the community; and 5/
2. the long-term goal of herd immunity (due to mass vaccination) will have to wait for the very large (1 million +) doses that will be delivered starting in late April, so the idea is to best plan for that large-scale vaccination program 6/
So far as the first prong goes, we're doing pretty well. Everyone at Northwood has been vaccinated, as well as 3 other nursing homes, and progress is being made at the other homes. 7/
This is in the context of there being no virus out in the wild. So the success in controlling the virus gives some space for the vaccination program to find its legs. But here are the numbers, as of yesterday: 8/
The province has received 28,850 doses. Of those, 13,504 doses have been administered (and 2,709 of those have been second doses). That's a rate of "just" 47%, which many people point at as being the worst in Canada, or whatever. But wait... 9/
The province has also held back 9,668 doses for the second shot, so now we're at 80%. And that strategy, given the nonexistence of virus in the wild, plus the disruption in supply (no doses are coming next week), proved to be the correct strategy. What about the other 20%? 10/
Well, 5,850 doses were received last week. So, there's a lag, but not a huge lag — after the doses already put in arms and the doses held back there are just 5,678 un-administered doses — less than the number received in the last week 11/
NS has decided to deliver doses across the province, and with transportation, and then moving them to nursing homes, those delays of a few days don't strike me as unreasonable 12/
And we'll see, but with no doses coming in next week, it's possible that close to 100% of doses received will have been put into arms or held back for the second dose. 13/
The ultimate goal, I think, is to hold the virus at bay long enough that mass inoculation will reduce that R value to pretty close to 0 and end the pandemic. With that in mind... 14/
The real test of NS's vaccination program will come in May, when it will be tasked with delivering ~12,000 doses a day, throughout the province, and keep that pace up for 3 months. 15/
I'm among the first to criticize Public Health for what I see as shortcomings, but I just don't see any obvious problems with the vaccine rollout, at least so far. /end
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