The 75-year-old resident of Maimonides Geriatric Centre will be among the first in Canada to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which could be administered as early as Monday at the Montreal long-term care home.
“We’re celebrating Hanukkah, which is a time of miracles. It’s absolutely a miracle that we’re about to receive this vaccine so quickly,” Spanier, who is paralyzed from the waist down, said in an interview Sunday.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said some of the 30,000 initial doses of the vaccine will begin to touch down for transport to 14 distribution sites across the country Sunday night, with more crossing the border via plane and truck on Monday.
All 10 provinces have sites, but the vaccine will not go to the territories. The Pfizer vaccine’s -70 C storage temperatures make stocking it in the territories difficult, health authorities say.
Front-line health-care workers and long-term care residents will be among the first to be inoculated.
Maimonides is one of two long-term care facilities in Quebec that will receive the first doses of the vaccine. The other is Saint-Antoine in Quebec City, where public health officials said resident Gisele Levesque would be the first to be vaccinated.
Her nieces, in a press release, said Levesque, who moved into the facility just as the pandemic broke out in March, was calm and direct about being No. 1 on the list, saying simply, ‘I was chosen, of course.'”
While it’s unclear what percentage of people will opt to be vaccinated, demand appears to be very high in at least one province.
In Manitoba, which reported 273 new COVID-19 cases and seven additional deaths linked to the virus on Sunday, the government said it received over 100,000 calls from people trying to book appointments for the vaccine.
Only 900 spots are available to receive the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, however, with strict criteria on who is eligible. Half the spots were already filled by Sunday morning, the province said.
News of the vaccines’ imminent arrival came as Quebec and Ontario — the provinces with the most COVID-19 cases — reported a combined 3,671 new positive tests and 49 additional deaths linked to the virus.
Francine Dupuis, associate CEO of the Montreal regional health agency, said she expects to receive two boxes each containing 975 doses of the vaccine.
She said teams of health-care workers have been ready to administer the vaccines since Friday, but that they don’t know exactly when the shipments will arrive.
“It’s a well-kept secret,” Dupuis said in an interview Sunday morning. “No one knows right now.”
About 90 to 95 percent of eligible Maimonides residents have accepted to take the vaccine, she said. That means around 300 residents could be inoculated.
Health-care workers at Maimonides will be vaccinated next, and then the remaining doses will go to health-care workers at other long-term care homes, Dupuis said.
She said none of the initial doses would be set aside, as more shipments are expected to arrive to ensure people get their required second shot 21 days later.
Lucie Tremblay, the director of nursing for the Montreal regional health agency, said Maimonides was chosen because it is one of the province’s largest long-term care homes and it has a freezer that can store the Pfizer vaccine at extremely low temperatures.
She added that nurses from Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital will be deployed to the facility to help administer the doses and a doctor will also be present.
Tremblay said the goal is to administer all the vaccine within a week of the doses arriving.
“This is a great tool to protect our very vulnerable elderly,” she said. “Knowing that we’re going to be able to vaccinate them reassures me a great deal.”
Spanier said while she is extremely grateful to be receiving the vaccine, she is well aware of the toll COVID-19 has taken on those around her.
“It’s not a time for happy partying because we’re getting this vaccine,” she said on Sunday.
“It’s a time to remember: remember what this means, remember the losses that we had, remember that we want to protect every other person we can protect from getting this disease.”
That was echoed by Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, 67, who has lived at Maimonides since 2012 following a brain-stem stroke that left him quadriplegic.
“It’s the greatest mitzvah — it’s the greatest act of love and kindness that we can do for our fellow humans,” Cahana said of vaccination. “If we have a chance to save others, we should run at that chance.”
Kitra Cahana, one of the rabbi’s five children, expressed concern for residents’ ongoing vulnerability, but said she is “overjoyed” about the vaccine and grateful to staff who have helped her father over the past 10 months.
“They’ve sacrificed themselves and their own families, their own health, their own safety. They’re worked to exhaustion, and we have … endless gratitude for what they have given.”
Before the pandemic, Cahana was undergoing physiotherapy three times per week and visiting family for Shabbat every Friday, with friends and congregants dropping by his residence routinely.
Restrictions ended all that, and Cahana has rarely left his bed since March, losing 30 pounds during the first wave, his daughter said.
Kitra also noted her frustration over how governments have handled a pandemic that killed more than four dozen residents of Maimonides.
“For those individuals the vaccine has come too late,” she said.
“We’re seeing a repeat of what happened in the springtime in the second wave, and it’s been devastating. It’s been devastating to see how our elders and those who are most vulnerable amongst us and the heroes that care for them have been treated.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 13, 2020.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
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.
