The Northwestern Health Unit has hit another vaccine milestone as vaccination rates continue to increase across the NWHU catchment area.
The impressive milestone for the health unit is that 80.5 percent of people aged 18 and over have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 67.1 per cent of those aged 12 and over are fully vaccinated.
These numbers were a part of the NWHU weekly vaccine update. The numbers also showed that 70. 3 per cent of people aged 18 and over are fully vaccinated and 78.3 percent of those aged 12 and over have received one dose of the vaccine.
Dr. Kit Young Hoon Medical Officer of Health for the Northwestern Health Unit stressed in a media briefing on Tuesday, that the COVID-19 vaccine does work.
“Recent data released from Public Health Ontario, showed that for over 10 million vaccinated individuals, only 0.16 per cent became infected when partially vaccinated and only 0.02 per cent became infected when fully vaccinated,” said Young Hoon
The other vaccine milestone was a couple of weeks ago when the NWHU reached 100,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses administered. To date, the NWHU has administered a total of 108,112 doses of the vaccine.
Northwestern Ontario is just about within the provincial vaccine thresholds needed to exit Step Three of the provinces Roadmap to Reopen Plan.
Those thresholds are 80 per cent of the eligible population aged 12 and over has received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 75 per cent have received their second, with no public health unit having less than 70 per cent of their population fully vaccinated.