Fifty-one per cent of the eligible population has a COVID-19 booster dose in New Brunswick and the province’s pharmacists’ association says the uptake on vaccines is slowing down.
“We’ve seen slowing demands really since the start of the year, probably since late January, it started to slow down,” said Jake Reid, executive director of the New Brunswick Pharmacists’ Association.
He said despite the slowdown, there are about 400 to 500 people coming into local pharmacies daily.
“It’s a trickle right now,” he said in an interview on Sunday.
In New Brunswick, about 93 per cent of the eligible population have one dose, about 87.5 per cent have two doses.
According to Health Canada, that is above the average in the country.
About 84.7 per cent of Canadians have just a first dose, with second doses sitting around 81.7 per cent. In terms of a third dose, or a booster, the Canadian average is 46.76 per cent.
Reid said there is a general sense of complacency when it comes to getting the vaccine.
“That’s the worry factor,” he said. “Because this can still be very deadly. We don’t know what happens when people have had COVID after a couple of years, we don’t have the data on that yet.”
With “long COVID” and reinfection as something we don’t know a lot about, Reid said being vaccinated is more important than ever.
“People still need to get it to protect themselves and others,” he said.
Although vaccination continues to be encouraged by Public Health, according to Reid, the regional health authority vaccination clinics will come to an end on March 30, leaving the pharmacies to fill the majority of demand for vaccines.
Reid said nearly 800,000 doses have been delivered by pharmacists.
“There is an overall sense of COVID fatigue,” he said. “A part of it is that vaccine fatigue.”
Global News has reached out to the Department of Health for comment and is awaiting a response.