National vaccine registry needed amid measles resurgence, Canada's outgoing top doctor says

As Dr. Theresa Tam retires as Canada's top doctor, she's calling for a national vaccine registry.

Tam says the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020 and killed at least 60,000 Canadians, showed how badly one is needed to track vaccines and protect vulnerable communities.

A national vaccine registry, she says, could help prevent and manage crises like the resurgence of measles that the country now faces.

Tam says she's in favour of a "nationally interoperable network of vaccine registries" that connects all of the provincial and territorial health systems and helps identify pockets of the population where there is poor vaccine coverage.

While the majority of measles cases so far have occurred in communities that are historically under-vaccinated, she told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC's White Coat, Black Art, "we don't actually know exactly where the situation with vaccine coverage lies."

Tam spoke to Goldman from Ottawa for a feature interview reflecting back on her career as the country's chief public health officer.

The pandemic proved that the technology for a registry is there, she says, given that almost all provinces and territories made COVID-19 vaccine records available electronically during that time.

Although it was the pandemic that made her both a household name — and a target for hate — Tam came to the role of top doctor three years earlier, in June 2017, after occupying a series of other leadership positions within the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), including deputy chief. She has also served as an expert on a number of World Health Organization committees.

Leading Canada's public health response to COVID-19 was as much a personal challenge as it was a professional one, given Tam was also on the receiving end of racist and sexist vitriol during that time.

"What I try to do, certainly at the time and even now, is just to focus on the job that I'm trying to deliver," she said.

Those attacks were even harder on her staff — those monitoring the channels where the messages would come in, and who tried, as much as possible, to shield her from the worst of it, Tam says.

"And one member of my staff used to also read me the incredibly lovely cards and messages that the public sent to encourage me to carry on. It was like the antidote to the other messages as well. So that really helped."

One of Tam's provincial counterparts, Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health in Nova Scotia, says he has "huge respect for Dr. Tam."

"Certainly working with her during COVID, we were all kind of in this kind of team together. Having her leading us as chief medical officers was a real pleasure and a privilege."