OTTAWA — Federal procurement minister Anita Anand says Canada will do “whatever it takes” to get more vaccine doses delivered to Canada faster but there hasn’t yet been any change to the number of doses Canada is expecting to receive this winter and approvals for additional vaccines are still at least several weeks away.
Anand said Canada had already put a number of offers on the table to vaccine makers to get more deliveries faster, including upping the price per dose.
“We convey to the vaccine suppliers that we will do whatever it takes to get vaccines into this country and to do so as early as possible,” Anand said at a regular pandemic briefing to Canadians Friday.
Canada has approved two vaccines and is currently scheduled to receive four million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and another two million from Moderna before the end of March. That is the same delivery plan that has existed since November.
Reports say Israel — which signed a contract with Pfizer in mid-November, more than three months after Canada did — paid twice as much per dose, and is getting that vaccine much faster. Israel has vaccinated more than 1.5 million people already, mostly with Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine.
Canada has given doses to fewer than 250,000 people.
Canada’s contracts with vaccine makers have not yet been made public but Anand said Friday Canada paid fair market value for the doses.
Reports have put the European price for Pfizer’s product somewhere between C$18 and C$24 and the United States’s at about C$25.
Moderna has previously said it is charging CDN $40 to $47 per dose.
Anand did not elaborate much on what else Canada is doing to urge faster deliveries of the hottest commodities in the world, other than to suggest Canada isn’t going to follow the United Kingdom and delay a second dose of the vaccines in a bid to get more people a first dose faster.
“It’s important from a procurement perspective to remember also, that as we press for additional deliveries on an accelerated basis, we need to be able to show to the vaccine companies that Canada is indeed following the instructions that a second dose be administered in a certain time frame,” said Anand.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is to be given in two doses 21 days apart and Moderna’s in two doses 28 days apart.
Canada’s national advisory committee on immunization is looking at the evidence to determine if a first dose works well enough for long enough to allow the second dose to be delayed.
Neither Pfizer nor Moderna is on board with the idea, because their clinical trials are based on the dosing schedule as listed.
Dr. Supriya Sharma, the chief medical adviser at Health Canada overseeing the vaccine approvals, said there have been some calculations that suggest both vaccines are quite effective after one dose, but because almost all the trial patients who were vaccinated got a second dose on schedule, it’s impossible to know how long that single dose’s immunity would have lasted.
Sharma said early studies on animals that got single doses showed immunity waned.
She said the first report on adverse events from vaccines administered in Canada so far shows no evidence of any trouble. There have been no rare side-effects seen at all, and the mild and moderate side-effects, such as fevers, headache and fatigue, were in line, both in severity and frequency, as what was seen during the clinical trials.
That news was overshadowed by federal-provincial vaccine bickering, with Ottawa concerned doses aren’t being given by provinces fast enough and provinces arguing they’re running out of doses to give.
Several premiers say they can vaccinate people faster if more doses can be delivered and are potentially going to run out of doses.
But Anand said Ottawa has been clear to the provinces on the delivery schedules and they should base their vaccine efforts on that.
She said deliveries will double between January and February.
Moderna deliveries come every three weeks, and are to go from 170,000 per shipment to 250,000 in February and 1.24 million in March.
Pfizer deliveries happen weekly, and are to include 208,650 each week in January, and more than 366,000 each week in February. Pfizer’s March deliveries aren’t yet confirmed.
Canada expects to vaccinate three million people by the end of March, 15 million to 19 million people by the end of June, and all 38 million Canadians by the end of September.
That assumes every Canadian wishes to be immunized and that vaccines prove safe and effective for children as well as adults.
Anand acknowledged the schedule also depends on Canada approving more vaccines. Moderna and Pfizer are to send enough to vaccinate about 30 million Canadians by the end of September.
Health Canada is reviewing submissions from drugmakers AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, but Sharma said a lot of information has to come in from them before decisions can be made on their vaccine candidates.
AstraZeneca’s has been approved in the United Kingdom but Canada is waiting for results from a big trial in the United States. Sharma said that review is complicated because AstraZeneca made a mistake in its earlier trials and some people only got half doses instead of full doses.
Sharma said she expects results from the AstraZeneca U.S. trial in one to three months. Johnson & Johnson could report results before the end of January.
Health Canada can’t make a decision on either until those results come in.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 8, 2021.
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.
