Canadians have been asking this question for months now — when will we get the vaccine?
Epidemiologist Dr. Isaac Bogoch recently joined The Morning Show to speak to that question and to share all the latest COVID-19 updates.
On Tuesday, Moderna gave the world good news when it announced that its vaccine is up to 94.5 per cent effective.
However, Dr. Bogoch says the promising results also call for optimistic caution. The data still needs to be peer-reviewed and made accessible to experts.
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Moderna applied for vaccine approval in the U.S. and the U.K. However, the company has been gradually releasing data to Health Canada for its approval.
The infectious diseases expert believes the approval process will be fair and transparent.
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While we still don’t know when will we receive the vaccine, Bogoch says prioritized groups like people in long-term care homes and front-line workers will be among the first to get the vaccine when it is available.
He says a significant number of deaths come from long-term care homes and giving them vaccines will reduce the stress on the health-care system.
As for concerns about side-effects of the vaccine, Bogoch says people receiving the two-shot vaccine may experience fatigue, fever and a sore arm. “It is important to inform people on what they can expect,” he says.
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While Canada, and indeed the world, waits for vaccines amid continued restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19, lockdowns have been working elsewhere — in countries like France and the U.K. — to reduce infection.
Bogoch says “we can all acknowledge that they’re terrible for mental health, they bad for physical health, they take a tremendous economic toll,” and urges Canadians to stay patient in these lockdowns because they can get the cases under control despite the challenges.
“Unfortunately, when health-care systems are stretched beyond capacity, that’s really the last straw,” he added.
To find out more about Canada’s process of getting vaccines, watch the full video above.