MamaGte: COVID-19: Single dose of vaccine protects against Delta variant, study; Ontario reports 296 new cases

Author of the article:

Jacquie Miller

Publishing date:

Jun 15, 2021 • 5 hours ago • 8 minute read • 11 Comments

File: A medical worker fills a syringe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. Photo by YVES HERMAN /REUTERS

What you need to know, briefly

Ottawa Public Health reports 10 new cases, no new deaths

People who are concerned about how much protection vaccinations offer against the more contagious Delta variant can take some comfort from data emerging from England.

Even a single dose of AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioTech vaccine provides significant protection against severe illness caused by Delta, according to a study released Monday by Public Health England.

One dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offered 94 per cent protection against hospitalization, while one does of AstraZeneca was 71 per cent effective, according to the preprint study.

After two doses, the effectiveness against hospitalization rose to 96 per cent for Pfizer and 92 per cent for AstraZeneca. That’s similar to the protection against hospitalization those vaccines offer against Alpha, the variant that originated in Britain.

Those are measures of protection against severe illness that causes hospitalization. The protection offered by either vaccine against contracting less severe illness caused by Delta, however, is lower.

One dose of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine was only 33 per cent effective in preventing symptomatic disease, according to earlier estimates by Public Health England.

The latest study was based on evidence from 14,019 people with COVID-19 caused by Delta in England this spring.

It’s the first estimate from Public Health England on how well the vaccines protect people from illness so severe it causes hospitalization.

That’s crucial to evaluate the risk posed to people by Delta and the consequences of easing pandemic interventions, said the study.

The data arrives as COVID-19 case counts are dropping in Ontario and vaccination rates are climbing, but against the backdrop of the spread of Delta, the virus variant originally identified in India.

Delta is spreading rapidly in Ontario. It’s expected to replace the variant now called Alpha (first identified in the U.K.) variant as the predominant form of the virus in the province, said Barbara Yaffe, the associate chief medical officer of health, at a briefing Monday.

It was a similar story in Britain, where Delta grew over a matter of weeks to become the dominant variant just as the country was coming out of lockdown.

Delta is about 1.5 times more transmissible than the Alpha variant, said Yaffe. The Alpha variant took over this spring during the third wave of the pandemic. Alpha in turn was significantly more contagious than the original COVID-19 virus.

Both Yaffe and Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer of health, stressed the importance of vaccination in the race to keep case counts dropping in the face of Delta.

As of Monday, about 74 per cent of Ontarians had received a first vaccine dose, and 14.6 per cent of residents had received a second dose and are fully vaccinated.

Williams said he hopes the province reaches 20 per cent of residents fully vaccinated in the next week or so.

The trajectory of the Delta virus in Britain over the last two months is a cautionary tale.

Delta now makes up 90 per cent of cases in the U.K., according to an article published Tuesday in BMJ.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Monday that England would delay the final stage of its exit from lockdown, which had been set for June 21, for at least four weeks.

“I think it’s now very clear that we will have a substantial third wave of COVID infections,” Andrew Hayward, an adviser to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London, told the BBC on June 13. His comments were part of the BMJ article.

“The really big question is how much that wave of infections is going to translate into hospitalisations,” said Hayward. “The fact that we’ve got 55 per cent of the adult population double vaccinated means that this will be substantially less bad than it could have been, but we still don’t know exactly how bad it could be.”

There is a wide range of opinions among scientists about the threat Delta poses in Ontario, said Dr. Doug Manuel, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and member of the province’s COVID-19 science advisory table.

Vaccination rates are increasing at record levels and coverage from two doses of vaccine are highly effective against Delta.

Still, further reopening will probably make it a “close race” between vaccines and variant, he said.

Some models predict a U.K.-like resurgence of the virus here in the late summer, while others suggest ongoing transmission in the fall, said Manuel.

The more contagious Delta variant also throws into question what level of vaccination among the population will be needed to reach herd immunity.

Dr. Yaffe said that in general, herd immunity is reached when 75 to 80 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated.

With the Delta variant, “we’re not sure,” she said.

Meanwhile, In Ontario some doctors and epidemiologists are taking to social media to educate people using humour about the equal effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna. Both are mRNA type vaccines.

There have been suggestions that some people are refusing Moderna and requesting Pfizer instead.

The difference between the two vaccines is like the difference between Coke and Pepsi, tweeted Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease physician at St. Joseph’s in Hamilton and professor at McMaster University.

I wouldn't recommend anything to my family that I wouldn't recommend to my patients.

My wife completed her moderna series last week.

There is no difference between Pfizer and Moderna - it is coke and pepsi.
— Zain Chagla (@zchagla) June 14, 2021

Latest COVID-19 news in Ontario

Ontario reported 296 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. The highest numbers were reported in Peel (62 cases); Toronto (60 cases); and Waterloo (45 cases).

Ontario is reporting 296 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 17,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 62 new cases in Peel, 60 in Toronto, 45 in Waterloo, 15 in York Region and 13 in Halton.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) June 15, 2021

Ontario reported 13 more people died from COVID-19, bringing the total number of deaths to 8,974.

There are 433 people in hospital, with 382 of them in intensive care and 244 on a ventilator.

In the rural areas outside Ottawa, one new case was reported in the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark health unit. However, there were no new cases in Renfrew; Eastern Ontario; and Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington health units.

Latest COVID-19 news in Ottawa

COVID-19 cases continue to drop in Ottawa, with Ottawa Public Health reporting 10 new cases as of Tuesday.

The new cases mean there have been 27,459 cases since the pandemic began.

OPH reports they know of 307 active cases in Ottawa.

There are 13 people in hospital, five of them in intensive care.

There were no new deaths, the toll remains at 585.

There was one new outbreak reported at a daycare facility, for a total of three ongoing outbreaks. There remain five ongoing outbreaks in health care facilities and one ongoing outbreak in a distribution facility.

In closely watched indicators, the rolling average of cases per 100,000 residents is 17.5, while the percent positivity in testing is 3.3.

The reproductive number, which measures the number of patients who could be infected by a COVID-19 patient, has risen to 0.97. A number below 1.0 indicates the virus is receding.

However, indicators of COVID-19 in city wastewater have risen in recent days. Wastewater testing is an early warning signal of rising rates of the virus in the community.

The amount of virus measured in Ottawa wastewater last week was at levels not seen since early May when daily case counts were in the triple digits in the city.

Dr. Doug Manuel, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and member of the province’s science advisory table, said the increased wastewater signal being seen in Ottawa is “similar to what preceded surges in the past.”

Although Ottawa’s seven-day average for new daily reported cases is in the teens, the level is probably much higher than that, given the wastewater reading, the fact that testing levels are low and Ottawa still has a fairly high positivity rate for those who are tested, said Manuel.

However, he also noted that there can be a lot of daily variation in the wastewater signal. The trends from week to week are the best indicator of what is going on.

At the same time, a suggestion that case counts might be going up, combined with the growth of the Delta variant in Ontario, “gives me a yellow light, proceed with caution,” Manuel said.

Latest COVID-19 news in Quebec

Quebec has recorded 105 new cases of COVID-19, the provincial government announced Tuesday.

It’s the lowest one-day case count since August. It brings the total number of cases to 373,217 since the pandemic began.

Hospitalizations fell for the 22nd consecutive day, with 209 people in hospital, a reduction of five. Fifty of those patients are in ICU.

There were 12 new cases reported in the Outaouais, for a total of 12,385 since the pandemic began.

In addition, six new deaths were reported Tuesday, none of which occurred over the previous 24 hours.

Two deaths previously attributed to the pandemic have been removed from the death toll after further tests revealed they were not related to COVID-19.

There have been a total of 11,177 deaths since the pandemic began.

Latest COVID-19 news from Canada

As more Canadians get vaccinated and summer approaches, there are still many unanswered questions about travel to and from the country.

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said Tuesday that she still advises Canadians not to travel to other countries.

The rules for Canadians who do travel are expected to be eased, though. The federal government has already said it plans to allow fully vaccinated Canadians who travel outside the country to return without staying in a quarantine hotel and isolating for 14 days. It’s not clear when that might happen, though, with federal officials suggesting changes might be phased in as early as July.

Tam also said Canada can expect COVID-19 border restrictions in place for those entering the country for a significant time.

“I think one would expect to continue to have distinctions for a period of time between those who are vaccinated coming and and those who are not, until such as time as we can tolerate the risks in Canada, no matter whether someone is vaccinated or not.”

Tam said she is also discussing with provincial officials what the world will look like after Canadians have achieved high vaccination rates.

“The bottom line, though, is that a public health capacity must be maintained in terms of our testing, sequencing, contact tracing and isolation capacities, to be able to react nimbly to any introduction and flareups , which at that point in time, hopefully will be detected and managed rapidly as we don’t expect to have a huge number of cases.”

Meanwhile, the federal information watchdog says key government decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic might be lost to history because of a sudden shift to new technologies and long-standing poor record-keeping practices.

In her annual report tabled in Parliament Tuesday, information commissioner Caroline Maynard says working remotely has meant using different tools, such as online meeting technology and instant messaging.

She says decisions may not be properly recorded when using these methods, raising questions as to how information is being managed, stored, shared with others and disclosed to Canadians.

The commissioner is an ombudsman for requesters under the Access to Information Act, the key federal transparency law.

-With files from Postmedia and The Canadian Press

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