There’s a lot of anxiety about AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s why I was grateful to get it — twice

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This article was published 31/05/2021 (1682 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I will never forget the chilling words from a much-loved friend.

“They told me to lie on my stomach to sleep. I said ‘I can’t sleep on my stomach.’ They said the next step is a ventilator. I said, ‘I’ll sleep on my stomach.’ ”

Her experience left me shaken, and underscored the importance of getting a second vaccination against COVID-19.

The virus is on the decline but remains invisible and dangerous.

Of the 526,000 people in Ontario who contracted the virus, my old friend is one of the 26,000 who required hospitalization. I am one of the lucky 14 million who has not caught COVID-19.

No matter. We were both thankful to get our AstraZeneca booster shots on Thursday.

Pharmacies from around the province packed up their unused vials of AstraZeneca and the related COVISHIELD vaccines last weekend for redistribution to Toronto, Windsor-Essex and Kingston — where they were first given — before their looming expiry on Monday, until Health Canada extended them to July 1.

Perhaps that makes us “bargain hunters,” as we were mid-March when almost 200,000 doses were released for injection into adults aged 60 to 64 before they were set to stale-date on April 2.

There was a mad scramble for appointments this week as 90,000 people were eligible to book for 55,000 available doses. If my email inbox is any indication, many were frustrated that their first-shot pharmacies did not get more.

But hearing Monday morning on the neighbourhood grapevine about a pop-up clinic at nearby Toronto Western Hospital, I was fortunate — tingling, actually — to snag a time slot minutes before they were gone.

That was a day before the Ontario government put out a list of locations — a reminder that you are your own vaccine hunter, as inequitable and frustrating as that may be.

AZ part deux feels so good, despite its perception as a lesser alternative to vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. That stigma is in part because of a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots, which has led to a pause on first doses in Ontario following 16 incidents, including one death still under investigation.

Those clots are 10 times more rare after a second dose, hence the decision of chief medical officer Dr. David Williams to proceed with them.

In two weeks, fully vaccinated, my friend, myself and thousands of others in the same boat will enjoy stronger protection against COVID-19 and help propel the province to the economic reopening everyone craves.

Public Health England calculates that two doses of AstraZeneca vaccine provide 60 per cent protection against symptoms of COVID-19’s B.1.617 variant, which was first identified in India, and 68 per cent versus B.1.1.7, the British strain that quickly dominated Ontario and drove cases to record levels in the third wave despite increasing vaccination levels. First doses were 33 per cent and 50 per cent effective after three weeks.

The first step in Ontario’s reopening is expected early next month with restaurant patios and more retailers allowed to welcome shoppers.

But 20 per cent of adults must be double-dosed for the province to further ease restrictions, likely in early July. That figure currently stands at five per cent.

That means a lot more needles in arms before Ontarians can enjoy hair cuts by a barber or stylist for the first time in months.

More to the point, there’s the safety of ourselves, loved ones, friends and strangers amid warnings from intensive care physicians that more contagious and infectious variants were landing more younger adults in hospital intensive care units than during the first two waves — and grim statistics about an increase in previously healthy people dying at home with COVID-19 because they didn’t recognize its fast-moving increase in severity.

There are forecasts the B.1.617 variant will eventually dominate here, with Premier Doug Ford acknowledging Friday “we’re in a race” to beat it back with vaccines.

“It is the big kid on the block … it is on the rise,” warned Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.

As public health restrictions ease with increasing vaccination levels and lower case counts, people who are not vaccinated will remain at risk, particularly in occupational or geographic pockets where they gather in larger numbers, he added.

“That’s where you’re going to have trouble, where you’re going to have big, ugly outbreaks,” said Furness.

My friend, who was granted anonymity to preserve her privacy, caught the virus last fall and was home for a week after testing positive. Symptoms began with a “weird” headache.

“I very rarely get sick but I was getting sicker and sicker,” she recalled, thankful her husband did not catch the virus. “It was the nausea. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep.”

At the end of the week, on a daily quarantine check-in call with public health, the nurse decided to send an ambulance.

“I felt if they could just get some fluids in me I could beat this,” said my friend.

Not quite. A chest MRI revealed “COVID pneumonia.” Badly congested lungs but with no telltale cough.

“What if we hadn’t called an ambulance and I hadn’t gone to hospital to get the steroids? Would I have been one of those people who just unwittingly, their oxygen level went down so far, that I died in my home or had to go to the hospital and go right on a ventilator?” she wondered.

“That never occurred to me at the time, but, looking back, I’m terrified at how scary that really was.”

My friend and I, both fully vaccinated, can now reflect on the fear of this pandemic year from a position of relative safety. For us, it’s nearly over. And if the rollout works and enough of us do our part, it won’t be long before it’s over for us all.

Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robferguson1