The Government of New Brunswick will open access to vaccination for children aged six months to five years next week. He points out that COVID-19 is circulating a lot at the moment. However, vaccination has stagnated for several weeks in the province.
In the absence of ideas to further promote vaccination once morest COVID-19, the Government of New Brunswick is opening its access to more people.
“We have opened eligibility for the second booster dose to those who are under 50, recalls the acting deputy chief medical officer, Yves Léger, with reference to July 12. We will also open access to vaccination for children aged six months to 5 years from next week.
On July 12, Health Canada announced that it had authorized this preventive measure with the licensing of Moderna’s SpikeVax vaccine. New Brunswickers can already make an appointment to get a first dose of this product for their very young children starting next week.
However, vaccination has been stagnant for several weeks in New Brunswick. On July 2, the government reported that 93.3% of the province’s eligible population had received a first dose of COVID-19; 88.2% a second dose and 52.8% a booster dose. On July 23, these proportions were respectively 93.3%; 88.3% and 53.1%.
“We take every opportunity we have to promote vaccination in the media,” says Dr. Léger. Especially in the current context, where we are seeing an increase in COVID-19 activity across the province.”
He argues that vaccines help reduce the risk of infection and especially reduce the number of severe complications from the coronavirus (hospitalizations and deaths).
Active pandemic
“The number of new positive cases seems to remain stable. On the other hand, we see that the number of new hospital admissions has increased further. This figure has been increasing for a few weeks, ”comments Dr. Léger.
The number of hospital admissions due to COVID-19 rose from 30 to 40 from July 17 to 23. The number of patients in the hospital who suffer from this disease is 116. It was 114 the previous week.
The highest proportions of hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 are in people aged 70 to 89 and those not protected by the vaccine.
There were 1,374 active cases of COVID-19 on July 23 in New Brunswick. Of the most recently sequenced random samples, 91% contained the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
There were five deaths in the province from the coronavirus from July 17 to 23, bringing the total number of deaths from the disease to 443.
“COVID-19 is not going away, it will stay with us, notes Dr. Léger. At times this activity will increase, then at other times decrease. It will vary. So it’s really important for people to pay attention to the situation so they can take the steps they’ve learned over the past two years to protect themselves.”
He advocates staying home when sick, wearing a mask in indoor public places, socializing outdoors, keeping your distance from others and washing your hands.