Island Health residents are ahead of schedule when it comes to receiving their COVID-19 vaccines. (File Photo/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS

Island Health administers 1,000,000th dose of COVID-19 vaccine

Jul 16, 2021 | 10:01 AM

NANAIMO — Island Health has hit a major milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

The health authority said over one million doses of approved vaccine have been administered to date, including a growing number of second doses.

According to Island Health, 48 per cent of eligible people aged 12 and up have received two doses of vaccine and are considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but the health authority is running into challenges linking up with younger, working-class individuals.

“It’s very clear that people who are working lower paid jobs who can’t get time off to come, working long hours so our mass clinics may not be as accessible as they should be. We are in the course of pivoting of identifying and easing access (to vaccine),” Dr. Richard Stanwick, Island Health’s Chief Medical Health Officer, said

Youth aged 12 to 29 mark the lowest rate of vaccination within Island Health, with 65 per cent receiving at least a single dose.

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Seniors make up the highest percentage of the population vaccinated with 92 per cent of people aged 70 and up receiving at least one dose.

A further 84 per cent of people aged 50 to 69 have also received at lease one shot.

The first dose of vaccine was administered in Island Health on Dec. 22, 2020 and in the seven months since around 79 per cent of people aged 12 and up in the Nanaimo and Oceanside regions have rolled up their sleeves at least once.

Stanwick said they continue to look for more, novel ways to reach out to people who can’t or aren’t making appointments at the mass clinics.

A pop-up clinic set up at Woodgrove Centre in June was immensely successful in reaching men, with around 90 per cent of all visitors seeking their first shot being male.

“There are ways we can reach these harder to access populations, make ourselves more easily (accessible), it’s not their issue necessarily if they’re a little vaccine apathetic or apathetic to registration, we’ve got to figure a way to make it easy for them.”

Island Health also used its mobile vaccination unit at an Island beach recently to take COVID-19 protection to people, instead of the other way around.

Island Health has set a goal of an 85 per cent vaccination rate and said its supply of shots is sufficient to achieve that.

The health authority represents around 850,000 people on Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and parts of BC’s central coast.

Stanwick added few cases of the Delta variant have been detected within Island Health in the last week, with cases primarily split between the Alpha and Gamma (P-1) variants of the virus.

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