Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK

If you’re wondering where you fall in the COVID-19 vaccine queue, an updated calculator is offering insight.

Jasmine Mah created the Vaccine Queue Calculator earlier this year and it’s been updated according to the national vaccine schedule with adjustments now made for the upcoming deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine (from both the Serum Institute of India and AstraZeneca). The Janssen vaccine from Johnson & Johnson was also approved on March 5, and she said she’s on the lookout for when that schedule is announced and I will update the calculator again, accordingly.

To get the information all you have to do is enter your basic data, like age, and whether you're a health-care worker or living in a group setting and a month comes up. Currently, the province pegs most general population vaccines coming in between April and September.

While the vaccine calculator can offer insight into when the jab will get put in your arm, it doesn’t offer clarity to what comes next for those who get it.

In the US, the Centre for Disease Control released long-awaited guidelines on how fully vaccinated people can safely visit others, be indoors without masks, and in some circumstances even meet with unvaccinated people.

B.C. has yet to reach that stage of the conversation, though provincial health office Dr. Bonnie Henry said Monday, March 8, that what the US CDC has put out appears to be “fairly reasonable guidelines.”

“I think ours will be very similar when we're there, however, we don't need to wait until everybody has their second dose,” she said. “Right now we're not at that point where we have enough of the people who are at risk immunized that we can have overall guidance.”

She said people in long-term care and other communal settings, people are still at risk, even if they have been immunized.

“We need to continue to wear masks to ensure that we're using all the proper precautions so that we're not putting people at risk when there's still so much transmission in our community right now,” she said.

“But I think that's a very good example of what we can look forward to as more people are protected, particularly more of our seniors and elders in the coming months.”

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