COVID-19: Fears over growing average daily vaccine stockpile in B.C.

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A COVID-19 contact tracing expert says an insufficient vaccine booking system in B.C. is leading to tens-of-thousands of doses left over each day.

Steve Water, founder of Contrace Public Health Corps, said he had been tracking the daily gap between the number of doses delivered to the province and the number injected. He said that gap has been growing on average since the middle of February.

For example, as of Monday, B.C. had received 631,160 doses of either the Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccine from the federal government and had used 539,408 of those — so there were 91,752 doses left over at the end of the day.

“B.C. is not keeping pace with the increase in doses delivered to the province — meaning federal supply isn’t the only constraint slowing down vaccination,” Water said. “The limiting factor seems to be the booking system itself, and that the province is slow-walking appointments to protect the fragile phone system until the new online system launches on April 6.”

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On Monday, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry reported 452,247 people had received one of the three approved vaccines — including 87,161 who had received a second dose. Henry said the province was ahead of schedule in its vaccination push.

Health Minister Adrian Dix said the province had done a good job of managing the supply of its most plentiful Pfizer vaccine.

“As of yesterday 412,466 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been given out of 426,660 that have been distributed to health authorities, which means we’re right to the edge of our Pfizer supply. We have been using the vaccine we’ve been receiving in our age-based campaign and I would say that’s really remarkable given the challenge of such a large province, really a remarkable effort by our health authorities across B.C.”

Water said there were many unclaimed appointments available in the age-based vaccine phone-booking system.

“This points to an issue with the appointment system keeping pace with federal deliveries to the province,” he said. “If this continues it could turn into a major backup once the province starts to receive much larger deliveries. If there are any challenges at all with the transition from phone booking to the online system, it could lead to substantial delay in administering the doses B.C. has available.”

Henry reported 1,785 new cases of COVID-19 over the last three days and 16 deaths (including one previous death that was reclassified as being due to COVID-19). The average daily case number over those three days was 595, including 55 variants of concern per day.

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There are now 5,290 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, of which 303 are being treated in hospital, including 80 in intensive care. This is the highest number in hospital since Jan. 27.

Henry said B.C. was in the last stage of the pandemic, but average case counts were still rising as the immunization plan was rolled out. She said the only explosive outbreaks were in workplaces.

“Concerningly, we are starting to see younger people who are being affected end up in hospital, and needing hospital and ICU care,” she said. “In particular, we’ve seen this increase being focused in the Lower Mainland, and people in hospital and in ICU in the Lower Mainland.

“This is a concern because, as we know, that is where the highest population density is. This type of an increase can quickly get out of control. That is something we don’t want when we’re at this phase of the pandemic.”

dcarrigg@postmedia.com

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