Virus variant headlines have been superseded by excitement about new vaccines being approved.
- In Canada, AstraZenica was approved and Johnson & Johnson approval is expected within weeks.
- In the U.S. the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was approved and started rolling out on March 1, 2021.
Will these new vaccines be enough to change the trajectory of the virus variants?
I updated the Canada model to add new vaccines not already included under the existing contracts.
- 2 million doses of AstraZenica from March to end of May.
- 10 million doses of Johnson & Johnson from June to end of September.
This increase in vaccinations will not be enough to prevent a huge spike in Covid-19 cases from the virus variants, and a lockdown will need to be imposed by the end of March.
In the U.S. the situation is quite different. Not only have they vaccinated a lot more of their population but they have also had many more Covid-19 cases which impart immunity. The U.S. immunity as of March 1 is approximately 25% of the population compared to 7% in Canada. As a result, the U.S. does not face a huge spike from the virus variants.
For a complete graph of daily new Covid-19 cases in Canada and the U.S. see
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=CAN~USA®ion=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc
There are many variables at play here, and these scenarios are quite sensitive — a small change in one of the variables can make a big change in the result. There is no question that there is a race between the virus variants and the vaccines. The very different case predictions between Canada and the U.S. shows how critical the immunization level (total of vaccinations and prior cases) is at the time the virus variants start to increase in mid March.
