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Dr. Joanne Liu, a pediatric emergency room physician and former international president of Doctors Without Borders, is joining the McGill University’s School of Population and Global Health as a professor “focusing on pandemic and health emergencies.” Liu, who grew up in Quebec City, got her degree in medicine at McGill in 1991. She joined Doctors Without Borders in 1996, working with Malian refugees in Mauritania, and co-ordinating aid projects around the world after natural disasters and epidemics like the Ebola outbreak in 2014. She also sits on the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
If Quebec and Canada can get to an “85-ish per cent” vaccination rate, there’s a chance we can attain a type of herd immunity that would relegate COVID-19 to the ranks of an annoying common cold, immunologists forecast. Picking an exact percentage is problematic, Quebec’s public health director Horacio Arruda said Tuesday, because it depends on how the virus will mutate, and how the cycles of the disease will play over the years. “Herd immunity is related to the characteristics of the virus,” he said. “For measles, you need 95 per cent for getting herd immunity. But I think with a vaccine, and especially a second dose, we will be in a good condition to lower the rates and lower the impact of the disease.”