TORONTO -- With four different COVID-19 vaccines available to Canadians, there are concerns that some people will delay getting vaccinated until they can get the particular vaccine they want. But such “vaccine shopping” is unwise and only raises the risk of contracting the disease, says one infectious disease specialist.

“Everyone should get vaccinated as soon as possible rather than waiting a month or two to get the vaccine of their choice because the best way to not get COVID is to get vaccinated and those delays while choosing it puts you at risk,” Dr. Anna Banerji said on CTV’s Your Morning Wednesday.

With a steady news flow on vaccine approvals and distributions, it can be easy to focus on the published efficacy rates for the vaccines approved by Health Canada – around 95 per cent for the Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines, 62 per cent for AstraZeneca-Oxford, and about 67 per cent for the recently approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, says Banerji. For one thing, the populations they were tested on were not identical, and for another, a more important measure is their ability to prevent the most severe cases of the disease.

“What's really important is the rate of reduction for hospitalization and severe disease, and when you compare the vaccines they are fairly similar in the way that they all seem to work,” says Banjeri, noting that while AstraZeneca-Oxford has an overall 62 per cent efficacy rate, trial results showed a 100 per cent reduction in severe illness and death.

There’s also the matter of the new variants and uncertainty about how effective the vaccines are against them, particularly following an outbreak at a B.C. care home where many staff and residents had already been vaccinated.

“None of the vaccines are 100 per cent, especially as new variants come. We probably will need to modify all the vaccines and adjust to the new variants,” said Banjerji.

Banerji noted she has had COVID-19 herself, having contracted the disease a year ago during the initial outbreak. She said her sense of smell has not fully returned.

“I spent a lot of my time talking to people that had had COVID and some of the long haulers. So you don't want to risk getting COVID at a time you're waiting for these vaccines,” she said. “They say that 10 per cent of adults can get longer symptoms and it's just not worth it.”