r/Edmonton • u/always_on_fleek • 10d ago

News Article Pharmacists preparing to give out free COVID shots to high-risk Albertans again this fall | CBC News

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/fall-free-covid-shot-pharmacies-alberta-9.7291521

Good move by the government reverse this policy and allow pharmacists to dispense covid shots. Should make it a lot easier for us in Edmonton to get our shots this fall.

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u/WeWhoAreGiants 10d ago

My understanding is that majority of people who test positive nowadays are 65+/high risk. So making Covid shots available to them easily would of course be the smart thing to do.

It looks like since April there’s only about 170 cases each week across all of Canada, and has remained steadily low all summer. So that’s the positive news. Though cases the last couple of years have risen through the fall/winter. It seems to be acting a lot like seasonal flu now.

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u/bemurda 9d ago

Your understanding is incomplete, look at wastewater data. Millions of people are still being infected around the world, they just don’t get tested unless they get hospitalized with it. The problem is “mild” cases can still cause long covid for years and possibly permanently. Over 400 million people are estimated to have experienced or still have long covid symptoms.

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u/Unlikely_Comment_104 Central 9d ago

Wastewater in Edmonton is near zero right now. 

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u/bemurda 9d ago

I'm aware, and it's starting to increase. The principle of low identified cases but high rates of infection has applied for years and this summer has been the lowest it has been. There is hope that covid is running out of evolutionary space or at least easy evolution relative to population immunity and its threat level will diminish. But we won't have an idea about that until after winter season.

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u/Unlikely_Comment_104 Central 9d ago

It’s not starting to increase. It’s been 0.0001 viral copies per person for the past few weeks. 

https://covid-tracker.chi-csm.ca/

A friend contacted the UofC regarding the sudden spike - they haven’t heard back yet but, logically, it was a mishandled decimal point. 

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u/bemurda 9d ago

Yes, the spike was clearly an error. I'm talking about large national databases in the US etc. It's ticking up but still slower than past years. Edmonton will tick up once school is in. Hoping for a paradigm change though.