The area’s chief medical officer of health said it will probably be at least another year before an effective vaccine for COVID-19 is created and distributed.
Dr. Nicola Mercer, Medical Officer of Health for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, said hundreds of vaccines are currently being developed around the world.
“Even the vaccine that is first out of the gate may not ultimately be the best vaccine, but this COVID-19 virus is going to be with us a long time,” Mercer told GuelphToday.
WDG Public Health is already working on a plan on how it will immunize the 320,000 people in its care area when an effective vaccine does become available.
Challenges will include the portion of the population who will not want to be immunized, deciding who will be immunized first and who has access to the vaccine, among other concerns.
“These are all of the logistics we are planning for today. We actually have a team who is planning for this immunization event that we actually don’t even have a vaccine for yet,” said Mercer.
“I think it’s important for the public to know we are really considering how we are going to do this, even if the doing of it is still many months away. I hope six months away, I’d rather be immunizing people sooner rather than later,” said Mercer.
“When (the vaccine) comes we will have a plan and we will be ready.”
Right now, Public Health faces a number of new challenges, including the reopening of schools and the upcoming flu season.
“I know there is a lot of concern and fear about schools reopening, but if you look worldwide you will see there has been examples of schools reopening on both sides of concern, so there has been areas of the world that have had significant outbreaks and there has been parts of the world that have opened their schools and have done so successfully with no major outbreaks,” said Mercer.
“The significant factor for us to successfully open the schools is to limit COVID in our community.”
Mercer said she is hopeful the upcoming flu season will not be a bad one.
“All of the things that cause COVID to transmit are the same things that cause influenza to transmit, so if we practice the same behaviours that we should be practicing to avoid getting COVID-19, that will also prevent us from getting influenza,” said Mercer.
“Do I expect us to have a high flu season? Probably not, if people continue to limit their social circles and keep hand hygiene we should see less influenza or influenza will follow and track the same as COVID. If we have a lot of COVID we might have a lot of influenza but I am hoping we don’t see a lot of COVID and we can curtail that.”
