theBreaker.news Podcast: Why aren't Parkinson's patients on B.C.'s COVID-19 vaccine priority list?

For the week of April 11, 2021:

In British Columbia, 200,000 people are prioritized for the coronavirus vaccine because they have had an organ transplant, cancer, severe breathing condition, diabetes, heart disease or weakened immune system.

Neurologist Prof. Bas Bloem (Radboud University)

But the 13,000 people living with Parkinson’s Disease are not on the clinically extremely vulnerable list, at a time when B.C.’s vaccine rollout lags and COVID-19 variants are spreading rapidly.

One of the world’s top neurologists says they need to be added to the list.

“If you have COVID over and above [Parkinson’s], then you’re at risk of severe complications,” Prof. Bastiaan Bloem of Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, Netherlands, told theBreaker.news Podcast host Bob Mackin.

“Symptoms may worsen, respiratory complaints are larger, the risk of mortality is increased. I would like to see people with Parkinson’s prioritized.”

Click below and listen to the full interview with Prof. Bloem, who is also the co-editor of the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease.

Also, hear from Dr. Jim Bovard, the team doctor for the Vancouver Canucks, from his April 9 update on how the coronavirus spread through the dressing room and put the club’s National Hockey League season in doubt.

Plus commentary and Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines.

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn or Apple Podcasts.

Now on Google Podcasts!

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

Support theBreaker.news for as low as $2 a month on Patreon. Find out how. Click here.