The federal government has suggested that it will need 75 per cent of the population at least partially vaccinated for the country to reopen and for things like cross border travel to resume. Officials in this province say they too are working on similar reopening targets.
Premier Andrew Furey says they are looking at the federal modeling for COVID-19, as well as the epidemiology here and in other jurisdictions.
Health Minister John Haggie adds that the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) guidance has been the “bedrock” for the province’s response. Further, ministers from across the country have been discussing a “tiered response” to reopening.
Haggie says 75 per cent partially vaccinated and 10 per cent fully vaccinated has been floated around at the provincial level, with 20 and 10 per cent being used more generally for Canada as a whole.
The province now has 50 per cent of the eligible populations partially vaccinated, so according to Haggie reaching that 75 per cent threshold is not that far off.
He says about one per cent of the population is being vaccinated per day, so it will take about three weeks to reach 75 per cent partially vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador’s COVID-19 vaccination numbers are climbing, and according to the province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
As of yesterday, 50 per cent of the province’s eligible population had received their first dose of the COVID vaccine.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that with each passing day, the light of the end of the tunnel gets brighter, and alert level 1 is in sight as long as people hold on a bit longer.
She explains that in moving to Alert Level 1, there are numerous factors for Public Health to consider such as national epidemiology, the percentage of our populations vaccinated with two doses, and real-world evidence on vaccines about the transmission of disease and severe illness.