I can also possibly make a comment as a physician.
I think, to my mind, we're doing some good stuff. The marvellous observation over the last month or so is we've had long-term care facilities in Ontario serve as a major source of death during this pandemic and the Pfizer vaccine and then the Moderna vaccine have basically shut that down. Our science table has a brief that came out today looking at the impact of these vaccines in long-term care and it's nothing short of spectacular.
If there's a major failing that I see in Ontario that's holding us back, and I think we are starting to fail to keep up with vaccine supply as it comes into the province, we have about 8,000 or 9,000 family doctors in this province who vaccinate a few million Ontarians against influenza every flu season. I'm aware of the logistical issues with the mRNA vaccines, but we're starting to get into vaccines that don't have the same extreme cold requirements for storage. I think family doctors know how to do this. They know their patients. They know how to prioritize and how to get folks vaccinated.
I think there are some infection control concerns in terms of individual people's offices and not all doctors feel comfortable having a large crowd of folks pass through at this time. But I do think that as we try to do something new, we have to use the tools that we already have in our tool box. We do have this group of individuals who are very, very good at vaccinations who have been underutilized to date, so I hope that changes.
The thing I'm proudest of in terms of the Ontario science table, and it's brought me along a little bit.... We see this every year with the influenza vaccines. Usually the dilemma with vaccinations is that the vaccines are least good at protecting the individuals you most want them to protect. Most deaths from influenza each year occur in individuals over age 65, for whom traditional influenza vaccines—we have some better ones now—arguably have not worked at all in that demographic. We've directly tried to protect individuals with vaccines that are very unlikely to work in that age group, whereas we could probably protect them more effectively by going for the herd, as the flu vaccines work in younger people.
We don't actually have that dilemma with COVID vaccines, because the mRNA vaccines in particular are so potent that we can directly protect individuals over age 80, over age 70, individuals with underlying medical issues, by directly vaccinating them. To some extent, this decision has been a bit of a no-brainer in terms of who you vaccinate first. It's older people, and I think you see that in other countries.
The modification to that which has come out of our science table is this observation that about 90% of all of our COVID cases come from 10% of our postal codes in Ontario. Those have been overwhelmingly postal codes that are more densely populated urban areas, lots of people of colour, lots of new Canadians, lots of folks involved in essential work. What came out of the science table, and I think the province is now following this, is an attempt to sort of front-load, in addition to prioritizing older people and folks with underlying medical conditions, vaccinations in some of these zip codes that have been really the hardest hit, to try to get some of those herd effects as well.
I think it's a neat piece of nuance. I realize it raises equity concerns in other areas where people have said, “Hey, what about us over here? We're vulnerable, too.” These are hard decisions with a scarce resource, and I think they did pretty well with that.