What Canada can learn from U.S., U.K. about COVID-19 vaccinations and reopening - CBC.ca

For a few brief weeks in February and March, Nancy Olaoye envied her friends in Canada.

Its approach to pandemic management could offer lessons for parts of Canada still struggling and a contrast to the United States — which, like the U.K., has vaccinated millions, but is still reporting tens of thousands of new cases of COVID-19 every day due to some lingering hot spots.

"Everyone's been calling June 21 Independence Day or Reopening Day," Olaoye said, "and they're joking about it.".

Olaoye and her husband haven't been vaccinated yet — they're "impatiently waiting" for 30-somethings to become eligible, she said, which should happen this month — but two-thirds of U.K.

In both countries, the daily number of COVID-19 cases has dropped dramatically as millions of people have been vaccinated.

"I don't know to what extent we can even call them restrictions anymore," said Katie Pontifex, a nurse at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Mich.

Pontifex, who sits on the Michigan Nurses Association's board of directors, said she and many of her colleagues wanted stricter rules, even if it was just for a few weeks.

Pontifex said she and her colleagues have been burnt out since the fall, when they experienced their previous COVID-19 surge, and some are now second-guessing their career path.

Jennifer Nuzzo, lead epidemiologist for Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative, says the fact Whitmer had her "hands tied" by the legislature and Michigan Supreme Court, which limited her power to make emergency orders in October, is an obvious culprit for the surge.

"They had been quite aggressive earlier on in terms of using restrictions for the spread," said Nuzzo, referring to the restrictions the state implemented in March and April 2020. .

Generally, Nuzzo said, the few states that are still seeing rising cases, such as Louisiana and Wyoming, are those that haven't made as much progress with vaccinations.

There's a mix of factors at play, she said, including a lack of access to vaccines and, sometimes, hesitancy.

A text message is easy to put off, Nuzzo said.

Given the importance of vaccinating as many people as possible, Nuzzo said she likes Saskatchewan's approach, which has made reopening contingent on high vaccination uptake

Omar Khan, professor of bioengineering at University of Toronto, said Canada can take another important lesson from the U.K

Those five weeks not only allow more people to be vaccinated, he said, but also allow their bodies to develop the "optimal" immune response

"As soon as you pass that one-month mark, your rate of developing disease just plummets," he said

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