Is the second wave nearly over in N.S.? Strang answers questions about variants, vaccines

Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health says his two main concerns right now are keeping tabs on variant coronavirus strains and ensuring there's a steady supply of vaccines coming into the province.

Dr. Robert Strang told CBC Radio's Information Morning on Wednesday that even though COVID-19 cases remain low, the second wave may not be over in Nova Scotia. 

Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, reported 53 new cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day total since the start of the pandemic.

Strang's conversation with host Portia Clark has been edited for clarity and length. 

Our case numbers here are way down, and notwithstanding Newfoundland, they seem to be dropping elsewhere, too. Does this mean that the second wave of the pandemic is starting to wane? 

It certainly appears that way. I mean, every pandemic and the wave of the pandemic have their natural trend — they climb up and they come down — and then all the restrictions that provinces are using, so it appears that way. But we still have lots of activity around us. It may be starting to decline, but we're by no means out of the woods yet in the second wave. 

I guess the situation in St. John's illustrates the fact that communities spread can pop up quite quickly?

Absolutely. It's another lesson or a reminder to Nova Scotians first, New Brunswick, and now Newfoundland, how quickly things can turn around and why we need to continue to stay very cautious and vigilant around COVID for a number of months ahead. 

Will there be a third wave? How do you determine that? 

If you look historically there was a third wave of, you know, the great pandemic 100 years ago, but everything I've read seemed to be a fairly mild third wave.

I think the real thing we're concerned about — a lot of people right now — is a resurgence of activity, even while we're still in the second wave, a resurgence of activity due to the new variant strains that appear to be much more transmissible. I know that they're looking at that closely in Newfoundland, even with the testing to see is it one of the variant strains that's causing such a rapid outbreak. 

How concerned are you about the variant strains here?

I have two main concerns. The variant strain and doing everything we can to be looking for that. It's a real reason why we're even strengthening some of our border measures is to try to minimize the chance of the variant strain even getting in.

The second concern I have is waiting to get a long-term stability in our vaccine supply, but we do believe that is coming. 

It sounds like 10,000 doses are headed our way in the next week or so?

We have just under 9,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and if we actually get the approval and get all the right types of syringes, we can add a sixth dose to that. I haven't done the math yet but that gets us well over 10,000 doses if we're able to get that sixth dose.

Next week it will be by far the largest weekly amount of vaccine that we've gotten so far, and we expect that we're just going to get more and more. And as we get into mid to late April, we're expecting to get large amounts of vaccine on a daily basis. 

How effective will those vaccines be against the mutated strains or do we know that now? 

That's certainly being researched. Everything I've heard in various national calls or read is that there's no evidence at this point that there's a significant reduction in the effectiveness of the vaccine or the vaccines we have from these variant strains, but that is being looked at carefully. 

How carefully are you watching the mixing of vaccines and whether it might be possible to mix the Pfizer with the Moderna for the second shots and other vaccines that come on stream? 

I know there is work underway to look at, would it be possible to, you know, vaccinate people in the first and second dose with different types of vaccine. But again, we don't have an answer to that yet, so what we're focused on right now is making sure people, if they're immunized with a Pfizer vaccine first dose, at this point we need to get them the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine as well. 

Is it still possible, in your view, to have 75 per cent of the population vaccinated by the end of September? 

Everything we're hearing is that we had some short-term delays. That seems to be turning around. We're still on target to get the amount of vaccine we expected to get when we started our planning in the first 90 days. And then beyond that, we're still getting reassurance — it's not guaranteed — but we are getting the reassurance that our longer term supply, what we expect to get, we can plan to get that. So at this point, we are still on target for getting every Nova Scotian an opportunity to get vaccinated by the end of September. 

You're reassured by that too, Dr. Strang? 

We have to trust the people that are doing the planning. I think everybody in the federal government that we work with is working extremely hard to get the vaccine we need. Again, there's not a 100 per cent guarantee, but we have to work with those folks.

Some of that is out of our control, but we are building various types of delivery and administration of the vaccine [where] flexibility is a key component.... we can ramp up or ramp down our program very quickly to accommodate the amount of vaccine we have.