Canada isn’t ready to offer COVID-19 booster shots as there’s “not enough data” to support it quite yet, the country’s top doctor said Friday, despite countries like Israel pushing ahead with a vaccination top-up.
Dr. Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer of Canada, told reporters that even though the data is quickly “evolving,” the timing for boosters isn’t right.
“There’s not enough data to suggest that in Canada we would go into boosting as of yet,” she said. “But it is something that we’re watching very carefully.”
1:55 3rd COVID-19 vaccine booster shot likely only for ‘vulnerable populations’: Moore
3rd COVID-19 vaccine booster shot likely only for ‘vulnerable populations’: Moore – Jul 13, 2021
Tam’s comments come as Israel will begin offering a third shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to fully vaccinated people over the age of 60. Israel decided to offer the booster due to the highly transmissible Delta variant’s spread in the country.
Neither the European Union nor the United States has approved such a strategy.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is getting a booster on Friday. It will be offered to the targeted population on Sunday.
Tam said Canada isn’t seeing many breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people at this point, but the country is getting “operationally ready” to implement a booster if needed.
“But we’re very much attuned to the potential for a need for booster,” she said. “And we’re getting operationally ready, whether it is looking at supply, whether we’re looking at the implementation side, the provinces are looking at, well, what if we did need one? How would we implement that?”
A breakthrough infection is when someone who is fully vaccinated contracts the virus. These are expected, according to experts, as no COVID-19 vaccine is 100 per cent effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people.
3:09 Trudeau says Canada has enough COVID-19 vaccines for all eligible Canadians
Trudeau says Canada has enough COVID-19 vaccines for all eligible Canadians
Earlier this week, the government announced it had reached 66 million vaccine doses procured – enough to vaccinate every eligible Canadian. But, vaccination rates in the country have slowed.
To date, roughly 80 per cent of eligible Canadians have at least one dose of a vaccine and 65 per cent are fully vaccinated.
“But we’ve got to get those first and second doses and that’s got to be the priority,” Tam said. “But we will, of course, be updating everyone should there be a change in the advice for boosters.”
Also on Friday, officials said that Canada is likely at the start of a Delta-driven fourth wave of the pandemic due to an upward trend in cases across the country.
Most are in the unvaccinated, but if vaccine uptake doesn’t increase in younger groups, cases could eventually exceed health-care system capacity, a long-range epidemic forecast reads.
With COVID-19 and its variants continuing to spread across the globe, some pharmaceutical companies have begun exploring the possibility of booster shots to target variants or boost immunity.
On Wednesday, Pfizer released a trial update that claimed its third dose generated virus-neutralizing antibodies against the Delta variant more than five times higher in younger people and more than 11 times higher in older people than from two doses.
John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, reiterated the sentiment.
“The general feeling that it is not the right time for a third dose of the mRNA vaccines,” he said. “We’re not saying it should never happen, but now is not the time.”
Regardless, officials are keeping an open mind, including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
“We are very aware of Israel’s decision. Actually yesterday, a number of ministers had a good conversation with Dr. Theresa Tam, our chief public health officer, about the Delta variant and about booster shots,” she said at a separate news conference on Friday.
“As has been the case since the beginning of this pandemic, the Canadian response is going to be guided by science and by the advice of our medical officials.”
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
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