‘Boom, this just hit’: Newfoundland offers a cautionary tale about the threat of new COVID-19 variants Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account Getting audio file ... This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy. Full Disclaimer Newfoundland and Labrador's chief medical officer of health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald smiles at St. John's public health nurse Ellen Foley-Vick as she puts a Band-Aid on her arm after giving her the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in St. John's on Dec. 16, 2020. Sarah Smellie/The Canadian Press As pandemic life unfolded these past months, Newfoundlanders had it better than most. Early lockdown measures last spring meant that by fall, weeks would go by with no COVID-19 cases at all, or there’d be a single number, tied to travel, and quickly contained.