All Manitobans to receive first shot by May or June
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/03/2021 (1646 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
In Manitoba’s new best-case scenario, everyone in the province who wants to be vaccinated could get their first COVID-19 shot by May 18.
New projections were unveiled by members of the province’s Vaccine Implementation Task Force on Friday, just two days after it was announced Manitoba would be adopting advice from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommending that second doses of vaccine be spaced out by up to four months to allow more people to get the protection offered by a first dose.
In the less-optimistic low range scenario, Manitobans aged 18-29 would still receive their first doses of vaccine by June.
To accommodate the new strategy, the call centres that book vaccinations appointments are making changes to their procedures starting today.
Manitobans will no longer have to book their first and second vaccination appointments at the same time. People will be now notified when they should come in for their second dose.
Johanu Botha, a co-lead of the Vaccine Implementation Task Force, said the new strategy will not change how many doses the province is receiving or the province’s daily maximum capacity for administering doses.
Next week, the province is now expecting to receive 18,000 doses of the recently-approved AstraZeneca vaccine. This vaccine is expected to eventually be rolled out to pharmacies and doctors’ offices for distribution as it has less stringent cold-chain requirements than either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.
Though Health Canada announced it had approved the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine for use in Canada this morning, the province does not yet know when doses of that vaccine will arrive and be ready for use.
The province also announced on Friday morning that vaccination visits to First Nations communities across Manitoba will begin in mid-March, with the goal of having all consenting people vaccinated by mid-May.
Read more in Saturday’s edition of the Sun.
» The Brandon Sun