COVID-19 vaccinations continued this week after a brief pause during Christmas.
2,200 Nova Scotians have been vaccinated so far, primarily in the Halifax area, and more clinics are rolling out before New Years.
Vaccine clinics will begin to ramp up in January, according to Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health.
“Which has always been what we’ve been working towards,” he said.
“We’ve been fortunate to have a couple of allotments of vaccine come in later in December, which has allowed us to kind of test things out in both the delivering and administration of the vaccine. However our plan has always been to really ramp up vaccines starting in January.”
The arrival of the Moderna vaccine will also allow others outside the HRM to receive the vaccine, said Strang.
“As we get the Moderna product, that has less stringent temperature requirements,” he said.
“It still needs to be frozen, but just a regular freezer (will work). So that product is easier to move around and start doing vaccination across the province.”
The province expects 3,700 doses of that vaccine to arrive in Nova Scotia sometime this week, as well as more shipments of both vaccines in January.
Up to this point, only healthcare workers directly dealing with COVID-19 and some long-term care workers dealing with COVID-19 units have been vaccinated – Strang said the plans for this newest shipment of vaccines as well as others will come together next week.
The province reported two new cases today. One in the Central zone linked to a close contact, and one in the Northern zone linked to travel outside Atlantic Canada.
Nova Scotia currently has 30 active cases, with one person in the hospital.
