Mass COVID-19 vaccine clinic at Vancouver Convention Centre to give its last jab

One of British Columbia’s biggest COVID-19 vaccination clinics is winding down and will give out its last dose by 3 p.m. on Sunday.

Health-care workers administered hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine at the Vancouver Convention Centre over the last five months.

But amid dwindling demand, Vancouver Coastal Health is moving to smaller community clinics and pop-up vaccination events at places like Playland.

Vancouver physician Dr. Anna Wolak said the wind-down of the mass clinic, which was designed to get the bulk of the population vaccinated as quickly as possible, was a testament to its success.

“That speaks to the fact that we only have that last 15 to 20 per cent we need to get to,” she said.

“We’re not moving as quickly as we would like to be moving, but I think we’re finding that bringing the vaccines to the people where they’re at now is a strategy we need to work with.”

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Many of the people who have yet to be vaccinated are among the province’s younger age cohorts.

Wolak said many may work full time or do shiftwork that makes getting jabbed trickier, adding she believes the community clinic model may help bring those numbers up.

“By and large, the majority of that 15, 20 per cent, they’re not the conspiracy theorist anti-vaxers, they’re people for whom we need to make it easier for them to get their vaccines,” she said.

Over the last week, the province has administered an average of about 16,000 total doses per day, down significantly from the 61,800 per day that were being doled out in the last week of June.

The drop-off has been particularly pronounced among people getting their first dose, though the province says the announcement of its new vaccine passport program on Monday appears to have translated into an uptick in appointments.

Holly Henderson got her second dose at the convention centre on Sunday, and credited the vaccine passport, in part, with pushing her to get fully immunized.

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“I had already had my first dose for quite a while and I was thinking I might not get my second and just leave it,” she said.

“But then I saw that I was like, OK, I might as well just get the second one, it’s definitely going to make things easier.”

As of Friday, 83.9 per cent of eligible British Columbians, accounting for 75.5 per cent of B.C.’s population, have received a first dose of vaccine.

Of them, 75.8 per cent of eligible people, accounting for 68.2 per cent of B.C.’s population, have been fully immunized.

Wolak said the arrival of the much more contagious Delta variant has meant that doctors and scientists now believe that between 85 to 90 per cent of the province’s entire population needs to be vaccinated to arrive at so-called “herd immunity.”

“Unfortunately the virus keeps on changing. I hear a lot of the conspiracy theories that it’s just politicians changing the goal posts, it’s not,” she said.

“The science is changing.”

The fewer than one-third of British Columbians who are not fully vaccinated represented 82 per cent of all cases and 85.9 per cent of all hospitalizations between Aug. 12 and Aug. 25, according to the province.