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source: le Journal de Montreal

author: NICOLAS SAILLANT 

Thursday, January 14, 2021 12:00 AM

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

The first person vaccinated in Canada got COVID-19

She is due out of her 14-day isolation in the next few hours

Gisèle Lévesque, 89, of Quebec City was the first person in the country to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on December 14. The auxiliary nurse Nadia Charef Khodja had administered the dose to her.

The first person vaccinated in Canada, Gisèle Lévesque, still contracted COVID-19 two weeks after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at CHSLD Saint-Antoine on December 14.

The vaccination of Gisèle Lévesque, 89, had raised a lot of hope in the population. Yet, despite this first dose, Ms. Lévesque contracted the virus, very active in her CHSLD, some time before New Year's Day.

Joined by Le Journal on Wednesday, Ms. Lévesque said, however, she is recovering. "Yes, I'm fine. I am very close to being healed, ”said the woman in isolation now for two weeks.  

Difficulty  breathing

Without being able to be more precise on the moment of  diagnosis, Ms. Lévesque indicated that she felt symptoms just before the turn of the year.

“The symptoms are weakness and difficulty in breathing. I was out of breath, ”she recounts in a very audible voice.  

The one who caught the virus about two weeks after her vaccination said she was not afraid and believes that the dose she received helped her fight the disease.

"I think so. It has given me time to make myself the little soldiers who helped me get through it, ”she says. 

Immune or not?

If Ms. Lévesque is convinced that the vaccine was beneficial to her, scientists are more careful about the real impact that the vaccine may have had on the lady.

Immunologist Alain Lamarre recalls that studies have shown that the vaccine gradually gained in effectiveness in the first two weeks after the injection.

"It is very likely that she was immune to the severe form of the disease," said the professor from the National Institute for Scientific Research. On the other hand, given the age of the lady, it is also likely that the immunization had not been completed.

D Dr. Gaston de Serres sees more questions than answers in the situation of M me Lévesque, especially because clinical studies have been done on younger and healthy people. "It is possible that she is less well protected given her age," he speculates.

As a scientist, Dr. de Serres will therefore analyze the data on mortality. "The number of deaths is the big issue we are going to be interested in." 

As such, the CHSLD Saint-Antoine could be a sad example. An outbreak struck just days before the launch of the vaccination pilot project. Since then, 36 residents have died, some of whom received the vaccine, while 68 cases are still active.