COVID-19 vaccine deliveries back on track following significant delays, federal officials say
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander leading Canada’s vaccine logistics, said Thursday that deliveries of COVID-19 vaccine from the two approved suppliers — Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — are back on track following weeks of reduced shipments.
Fortin said 403,650 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Canada this week, the largest single delivery since shipments began in December. In addition, he said both companies are on track to meet their targets by delivering a total of six million doses by the end of March — four million from Pfizer and two million from Moderna.
“We’re now coming out of this period of limited supplies. It’s an abundance of supplies for spring and summer, where we can have a significant scaling-up of immunization plans in provinces,” Fortin said.
The updated timeline provided by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) shows millions more doses arriving between now and September than previously anticipated. It projects that Canada should have enough doses from Pfizer and Moderna to fully vaccinate 14.5 million people by the end of June, and 42 million by the end of September.
The federal government has come under intense pressure from opposition politicians and other critics in recent weeks as the country’s vaccine rollout slowed. Pfizer began reducing shipments in January as it retooled its plant in Puurs, Belgium, to expand manufacturing capacity. Moderna also has cut its shipments in recent weeks.
The delays have caused Canada to fall behind dozens of other countries in measurements of doses administered by population, according to a global vaccine tracking database maintained by University of Oxford researchers.
That said, countries like Australia and Japan are among dozens of countries that have yet to inoculate any of their citizens, with the World Health Organization saying earlier this month that about 10 countries were accounting for about 75 per cent of all doses given, a situation UN secretary general Antonio Guterres on Wednesday characterized as “wildly uneven and unfair.”
Public health experts have warned that a significant disparity in vaccination schedules around the world could allow for new, potentially harmful variants to form in countries where inoculation efforts have not reached a sizeable percentage of the population.
From The National
Israel is leading the world with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout and it’s already seeing results, but the campaign has been met with some hesitant demographics and criticism for not vaccinating Palestinians. 6:05
IN BRIEF
COVID-19 testing to begin in remote Inuit coastal community in N.L. after presumptive case
COVID-19 testing began Thursday and will continue Friday in the small Labrador coastal community of Makkovik, the Nunatsiavut government says, as part of the public health response to a presumptive positive case of the virus in the Inuit town.
Anyone can get a test, even if they have not travelled and do not have any symptoms of COVID-19, officials said.
“Today and tomorrow will be very busy, hard days,” Gerald Asivak, the minister of health and social development, told CBC Radio’s Labrador Morning on Thursday. “We’re going to ensure that we meet our standards, with the province, Dr. Fitzgerald, around what needs to be done,” he said, referring to Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, Newfoundland and Labrador’s chief medical officer of health.
In winter, Makkovik — with a population of 400 or so — is accessible only by air or snowmobile. As the COVID-19 response has ramped up, the community has been effectively cut off from the outside world, with all regular flights in and out suspended, save for medical emergencies. As a result, even just a few cases would be of great concern.
“If you have to go to St. John’s for medical reasons, it’s a pretty serious situation for a person’s health. So I’m just urging people to show compassion for the individual in question here,” said Barry Andersen, the mayor of the small community.
On a positive note, the transmission potential could be lessened in light of the fact that 74 per cent of eligible adults in Makkovik have been vaccinated for COVID-19, receiving both doses of the Moderna vaccine.
Kenney defends Alta. vaccine rollout plan as critics call for more details
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is defending his government’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the face of criticism that virtually no details have been shared regarding its distribution plan.
Kenney said Wednesday that he doesn’t see the need for a big rush. He said the province will lay out its priority lists for the next phases of the vaccine distribution program “pretty soon” after studying what other provinces are doing.
“The problem now is supply, we effectively ran out of supply for all intents and purposes in mid-January. So, that is our primary focus. I will say, when it comes to the subsequent phases, a lot of this is quite fluid,” he said.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi weighed in on Tuesday, saying he believes — despite all of the province’s talk about supply issues and Ottawa’s failure to solve them — that the bigger problem could be effective distribution.
“In other words, before we know it we’re going to have more supply than we have ability to put in peoples’ arms,” he said. “So, our goal needs to be to solve that problem now before it happens and make sure we are ready to do massive vaccinations as soon as supply is available.”
Rick Lundy, who’s with the group Open Arms Patient Advocacy, says the lack of information is frustrating.
“You almost question whether they do have a plan or they’re making it up on the fly,” he said.
But University of Calgary infectious disease physician Dr. Daniel Gregson says large venues like stadiums could be set up relatively quickly if Alberta received a big influx of vaccine.
“I think we could get it up and running as quickly as possible and you’d see a large group of people vaccinated over two to four weeks, kind of thing,” he said.
Alberta Health told CBC News it will confirm the next steps of the vaccine rollout in the next few days, following confirmation that vaccine deliveries for the province have been arranged through March.
Quebec feeling comfortable with decision to delay 2nd vaccine dose
The Quebec government confirmed in mid-January that it would delay the second of two doses of the COVID-19 vaccines for up to 90 days in order to get more doses into more arms early on, an approach that hasn’t been undertaken in every jurisdiction.
Based on preliminary figures just compiled by the Comité sur l’immunisation du Québec (CIQ), the approach appears to have worked. The data shows the vaccines to be 80 per cent effective after 14 days in younger vaccinated populations and after three weeks among the residents of long-term care facilities, who tend to be much older and sicker.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have issued protocols on administering a second dose at a precise interval — 21 and 28 days, respectively. That’s also the basis on which the vaccines were approved by Health Canada.
But Quebec’s early numbers, which the CIQ said align with results observed in British Columbia and Israel — as well as affirmative statements by the World Health Organization and U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci — seem to show that the interval period can be stretched out even a couple of weeks and still be effective.
The issue has come into play given the unpredictability of vaccine supply for Canada and some other countries early in the inoculation drive.
Dr. Gaston De Serres of the Insitut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ), who sits on the CIQ and co-authored the study made public Thursday, says it was never much of a gamble given the drug companies’ published clinical results and the existing scholarship on immune responses from vaccines.
“It wasn’t a very big bet, with everything we know about how vaccines work. We know that’s how it is. Why would these vaccines be so different?” asked De Serres.
Dr. Nicholas Brousseau, an INSPQ researcher and the chair of the CIQ, said that nothing in the data suggests first-dose immunity weakens with time, and that future research could show the preventive benefits of large-scale one-dose vaccination are even higher than its clinical effectiveness. “It’s very good news,” he said.
But provincial health experts are warning against complacency — a second shot is still vital for the two approved vaccines — and the rise of variant strains could prompt a re-think of the current strategy.
Stay informed with the latest COVID-19 data.
THE SCIENCE
B.C. researchers working to develop breath test for COVID-19
Researchers in B.C. are working to develop a breath test for COVID-19 that if successful, could provide results in less than one minute.
The test could theoretically be rolled out in the community — at airports, schools, arenas and other venues, said Dr. Renelle Myers, an interventional respirologist at Vancouver General Hospital and B.C. Cancer Research Centre who is leading the team developing the test at Vancouver Coastal Health.
The researchers are working to identify the specific volatile organic compounds in breath that could indicate whether the coronavirus is present, said Myers. Once they identify them, they’ll be able to test for only those compounds by running breath samples through a machine similar to the ones used at airports to scan for bomb or drug residue and have results within 30 seconds or up to a minute, she said.
“When you exhale, your breath actually contains over 1,000 volatile organic compounds, and those represent the endpoints of different metabolic pathways in our body,” explained Myers. “And they can represent a state of health or state of disease.”
As with many scientific researchers, the pandemic caused a shift in priority, as the team had been studying breath samples for their potential use in diagnosing lung cancer.
Dr. Chris Carlsten, division head of respiratory medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says the researchers will need to validate their results on several fronts. For example, it’s conceivable a breath test could pick up other respiratory viruses such as influenza instead of COVID-19, and the test would need to be able to detect even mild cases for it to have widespread applicability.
David Evans, a professor in the department of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, says the researchers are using sound science to detect the compounds, and if they’re successful, the technology could be valuable. But he said that there’s “a big hill to climb before it becomes a widely adopted method.”
AND FINALLY…
Why a Canadian in the U.K. signed up to be a volunteer vaccinator
Natasia Kalajdziovski hasn’t been home to Canada in over two years, but her pandemic experience has inspired her to help out where she is right now.
The PhD student in Britain was persuaded it was the right thing to do after contracting the virus early in the pandemic.
“I had COVID right at the beginning of the pandemic in March of last year [and] did not have a good time of it,” she told CBC’s As It Happens.
“Honestly, I would do anything in my power to prevent anyone else from going through the same thing,” she said. “I’ve [also] donated plasma.”
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson celebrated a “significant milestone” in the country’s efforts to eliminate COVID-19 as more than 15 million people received their first shot of a vaccine.
From Kalajdziovski’s standpoint, the government’s approach of getting as many first doses into arms instead of waiting for certain segments of the population to get two shots appears to be paying off.
“We’re now in our third lockdown. It’s been a bleak 10 months in a lot of ways, but the vaccination part of that, at least, is finally this wondrous light that we’re able to see in the moment,” she said.
And now the Toronto native wants to help out there, too. She just finished her training as a volunteer vaccinator.
“I think I’ll feel quite emotional when I do my first vaccination, which I am looking forward to,” she said.
Read more from the CBC Radio interview
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