Period between first and second vaccine doses extends to four months starting March 10

Over the weekend, the Government of Ontario announced that the period between the first and second vaccine doses will change from 35 days to four months (16 weeks) starting on Wednesday, March 10. All vaccination sites including Niagara Health must follow the directives sent out by Ontario’s Vaccine Task Force.

The Province confirmed that this new vaccination schedule applies to people who received their first dose before March 10 at the hospital’s clinic at Seymour Hannah Sports & Entertainment Centre in west St. Catharines. The interval of 21- 27 days between doses remains for long-term care, retirement and First Nations elder care home residents.

The Province based their decision on the recent recommendation from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), due to limited COVID-19 vaccine supply and increasing research that the first dose of both Pfizer and Moderna has high effectiveness against symptomatic disease and hospitalization several weeks after the first dose. By extending the period between doses, jurisdictions can maximize the number of individuals benefiting from the first dose of vaccine by extending the interval for the second dose of vaccine to four months.

Pfizer-BioNTech is the only COVID-19 vaccine type available in Niagara region at this time. The hospital will continue to provide updates on our website if and when other vaccines are made available in the Region.

Niagara Region Public Health is coordinating the mass immunization plan for the general public, which is planned to begin in late March. For more information and updates, please visit their dedicated webpage: https://niagararegion.ca/health/covid-19/vaccination.aspx.

Canadians are invited to participate in Open Dialogue on AI

Today, the Government of Canada’s Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence Public Awareness Working Group, in partnership with CIFAR and Algora Lab (Université de Montréal), is launching Open Dialogue: Artificial Intelligence in Canada, a series of virtual workshops to better understand the public’s perception of AI. The workshops will take place from March 30 to April 30, 2021, in regions across the country and will include designated sessions for youth and Indigenous communities. All members of the Canadian public are invited to register and share their experiences with, understanding of, hopes for and concerns about AI technologies.

Data gathered from these workshops will be included in a final report by the Public Awareness Working Group that will be submitted to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. The report will be made public on the Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence website in summer 2021.

Reading recommendations

Canadians shouldn’t shop around for vaccines with higher efficacy rates, experts say

Mark Gollom, CBC News

The approval of a fourth vaccine in Canada should not give Canadians the green light to hold off on getting inoculated in order to wait for other doses with higher efficacy rates, medical experts say.

That attitude will end up lengthening the time it takes to get the pandemic under control, said Dr. Peter Juni, scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

“If people start to do that, they actually prevent Canadians from moving slowly back to normal,” he said.

On Friday, Health Canada approved the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. This is the fourth vaccine approved along with shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford.

Cyberattacks are inevitable. Is your company prepared?

Keri Pearlson, Brett Thorson, Stuart Madnick, Michael Coden, Harvard Business Review

Cyberattacks always happen when you least expect them. And when they happen, they happen quickly. Responding appropriately is not just the responsibility of your cybersecurity team; everyone in the organization has a role to play. Is your team prepared? Do they know what to do and what not to do? Most importantly, has your whole team practiced their response? Everyone — the board of directors, company executives, managers, and team members — has to know their roles and responsibilities and work out any potential problems with their response before a live cyberattack puts immense stress on the organization.

There’s an easy way to determine whether your incident response plan (IRP) works and whether your team knows their roles: a test. Yet a Ponemon survey determined that 47% of organizations have not assessed the readiness of their incident response teams, meaning that the first time they test their plans will be at the worst possible time — in the middle of a cyberattack. Hackers constantly and consistently test your defenses and reactions. You must do the same.

Niagara COVID status tracker

Niagara’s most up-to-date COVID statistics, measured against the targets for the various stages of the Ontario COVID-19 Response Framework, are presented below. This does not predict government policy, but is offered to give you an idea of where Niagara is situated and how likely a relaxation (or further restrictions) may be. These data are drawn daily from Niagara Region. The Grey-Lockdown level does not have its own metrics, but is triggered when the COVID-specific measurements in a Red-Control region have continued to deteriorate.

Definitions:

• Weekly Incidence Rate: the number of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people per week
• Percent Positivity: the number of positive COVID-19 tests as a percentage of all COVID-19 tests performed
• Rt: the reproductive rate, or the number of people infected by each case of the virus