Health
Britain prepares to rollout Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine – TRT World
The first doses will be administrated to people over the age of 80, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents.
Britain is preparing to become the first country to roll out the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine this week, initially making the shot available at hospitals before distributing stocks to doctors’ clinics.
The government said on Sunday that the first doses are set to be administered on Tuesday, with the National Health Service (NHS) giving top priority to vaccinating the over-80s, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents.
Britain gave emergency use approval for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech last week, jumping ahead in the global race to begin the most crucial mass inoculation programme in history.
READ MORE:
BioNTech, Pfizer to seek FDA approval for vaccine on Friday
In total, Britain has ordered 40 million doses, enough to vaccinate 20 million people in the country of 67 million.
About 800,000 doses are expected to be available within the first week.
Initial doses that have arrived from Belgium are being stored in secure locations across the country, where they will be quality checked, the health ministry said.
READ MORE: Top UK medical chiefs expect major fall in Covid-19 deaths by early 2021
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Hard to preserve
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has onerous storage requirements. It needs to be kept at -70C and only lasts five days in a regular fridge.
For that reason, the health ministry said the vaccine would first be administered in 50 hospitals.
It said it would take a few hours to defrost each vaccine and prepare it for use.
NHS England has written to general practitioners, telling them to get ready to start giving vaccinations through local doctors’ services from December 14.
Rather than run clinics in individual surgeries, groups of local doctors will operate more than 1,000 vaccination centres across the country, the government said.
Exciting news: We received the world’s first authorization of a #COVID19 #vaccine, with @MHRA granting emergency use authorization in the UK. More regulatory decisions may come in 2020. More information: https://t.co/8Fpa22leS5 pic.twitter.com/mTIO48RgnN
— BioNTech SE (@BioNTech_Group) December 2, 2020
Boxes of the vaccine contain five packs of 975 doses, but special regulatory approval is needed to split them up.
A senior medical official has said that while he is hopeful it would be possible to split the packs and deliver straight to care homes, it will not be guaranteed.
Britain is among the first nations to roll out vaccinations outside the context of a clinic trial, raising hopes that the tide could soon turn against a virus that has killed nearly 1.5 million people globally and hammered the world economy.
Russia began distributing its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine through 70 clinics in Moscow on Saturday, although the shot has not finished its final trials.
While China is also preparing for a mass nationwide rollout of its locally-produced vaccine.
READ MORE: WHO says vaccines won’t halt short-term coronavirus surge – latest updates
Source: Reuters
Health
RCMP warn about benzodiazepine-laced fentanyl tied to overdose in Alberta – Edmonton Journal
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Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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