Berube, who has two young children, is one of many cancer patients in the province and across the country fighting for second vaccine doses within the manufacturer’s recommended time frame 21 to 28 days based on some studies that show a reduced effectiveness of a first dose in those who are immune-compromised.
Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and the territories have all adopted policies to prioritize chemotherapy and severely immuno-compromised patients for second vaccine doses, said Berube.
Berube said she received a text message May 4 confirming a vaccine appointment for the next day. Although she suspected it might be a glitch in the system, she went to the Victoria Conference Centre in the “slight hope” health officials had changed their policy and she would get her second shot of Pfizer.
Backed by about 300 runners and cyclists from the capital region and elsewhere just over $238,000 had been raised by early evening on Saturday and money was continuing to come in. Others were taking part in places such as Edmonton, Calgary, the Yukon and the U.K. Berube has stage four cancer and Victoria Beacon Hill MLA Lore’s son Asher, aged four, has a brain tumour. Berube and Lore are elated by others who took part in the campaign. On Saturday morning the pair started with a two-kilometre run and then covered four laps on the lake trail for a total of 42.2 kilometres.
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Provincial health minister Dr. Bonnie Henry was asked this week if B.C. would follow the lead of Ontario and Alberta in giving immune-compromised people including chemotherapy patients and organ-transplant recipients a second COVID vaccine dose within three to four weeks. “At the moment, no,” Henry said Monday. “The best protection for everybody is for more people to be immunized, to have that higher level of protection from a single dose and reduce the risk in our communities by reducing the amount of virus that’s circulating in our community.” Henry said the B.C. Centre for Disease Control is “monitoring vaccine effectiveness in every single person … so, if we start to see breakthrough infections or that the vaccine effectiveness is waning in certain populations, we can change our strategy, but we have not seen that yet.”
Last time we saw them run, it was Lise who was in the lead, Grace a little farther back as her shadow, her support. That was in May last year, when Lise Berube, fresh off five rounds of radiation. . .