In order to save lives and protect others during the pandemic Medical Officer of Health from the Northern Health Region Dr William Libich recommends people receive COVID vaccines once they are available for everyone. He explains after the first dose it’ll take about two weeks for that protection from that dose to kick in and after the first dose the protection is roughly 50 percent and so you really need the two doses that are spaced 28 days apart in order to get full protection and your full protection will occur two weeks after your second dose.  He points out one of the reasons that as many people as possible need to get immunized is there are going to be some people who don’t respond as well as we would like and even those who still get COVID after being immunized its anticipated we’ll have fewer hospitalizations and fewer deaths.

Libich emphasizes the number of people vaccinated will not determine whether or not restrictions will be lifted as that will depend on case numbers.