Canada is shifting its vaccination campaign to target frontline workers, moving away from a largely age-based rollout as the country tries to get a handle on the raging third wave of the pandemic, Reuters reports.

Targeting frontline workers and addressing occupation risk is vital if Canada wants to get its third wave under control, says Simon Fraser University mathematician and epidemiologist Caroline Colijn, who has modelled Canadian immunisation strategies and found “the sooner you put essential workers [in the vaccine rollout plan], the better.”

“If you protect these individuals you also protect someone in their 60s whose only risk is when they go to the store. [...] The variants are here now. So if we pivot now, but it takes us two months to do it, then we will lose that race.”