Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam is telling Canadians to get boosted within the federal recommended timeline or risk getting themselves and others hospitalized due to falling vaccine immunity against COVID-19.
“Without up-to-date vaccination to help prevent serious illness, many people could land in hospitals due to COVID-19,” she said, adding that the shots “may also help reduce the risk of developing post-COVID-19 conditions or long COVID.”
Tam said the country’s booster shot uptake early last month “has remained quite low with just half of the population vaccinated with an additional dose.”
Concerns Over Side Effects
A survey by polling firm Angus Reid in July found that among Canadians who said they have received one or two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, just 17 percent say they will seek another dose, while three in five (60 percent) say no.The poll also reported a “significant minority” (22 percent) of Canadians who believe keeping up with vaccinations “is not effective at protecting them from infection, serious illness, or death.”
The reports, presented to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Sept. 1, show that within seven days of getting the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, there were 14 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis among 102,091 males between the ages of 16 and 17. And of the 206,000 12- to 15-year-old males who got the same two-dose vaccine series, there were 31 cases within a week.
The incident rate for the 16- to 17-year-old age group was 137.1 per million while the 12- to 15-year-old group was 150.5 per million. Following the first booster dose, the figures jumped to 188 per million for the first group while the second group declined to 61.3 per million.
In the press conference on Oct. 7, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said the COVID-19 vaccines “will boost our immune system and give us better protection against Omicron.”
“If it has been six months or more since your last dose, it is time to recharge your immune vaccination, immune system, and get a booster dose,” he said.
The health minister also urged all parents to get their children from six months to 8–11 years of age vaccinated with the primary series of COVID-19 vaccine “so that they can be better protected.”