Vaccinated Manitobans should be cautious while COVID-19 immunity builds after deaths reported: province

Ten people in Manitoba have died from COVID-19 despite receiving a first or second dose of the vaccine, the province says, and it is urging Manitobans to continue to be cautious after getting inoculated.

None of the deaths have come from people who contracted COVID-19 more than 14 days after receiving their second dose.

“We are encouraged, though, that out of the hundreds of thousands of people who have received vaccines, that we still have only seen 111 cases of COVID showing up after the vaccine, which works out to … about 0.6 per cent, so incredibly low,” said Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead of the province’s vaccine task force.

“So we actually were quite reassured that the vaccines are very effective.”

A spokesperson for the province said the vaccine takes 14 days to really work and is not 100 per cent effective in stopping the virus in every person.

“Infections that occur within 14 days of a dose do not represent a lack of effectiveness in the vaccine,” they said.

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“The immune response takes around two weeks to build up after a dose of vaccine. So any infection that occurs during the first two weeks was either contracted before the dose was given or before the body had mounted an immune response.”

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Reimer agreed.

“It’s important that people follow the fundamentals while we continue to get more people immune, because once we have enough people in the community vaccinated, we start to protect each other.”

According to provincial health data, as of April 9, 162 people who had received their first dose were infected within 14 days of getting the shot. Twelve of those were hospitalized and four died.

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Of those who had received their second dose, 24 were infected within 14 days of getting their second shot. Three of those people were hospitalized.

As of April 9, 111 people who had received their first dose were infected at 14 least days after the shot. Nine of those were hospitalized and six died.

Of those who had received their second dose, nine were infected at least 14 days after the shot. None were hospitalized or died.

During a technical briefing earlier in the day, the province said it will be opening up a supersite in Steinbach and is looking at reworking pop-up sites.