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Canada not shifting to stretch supply of monkeypox vaccine yet – CBC News

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Canada will not yet shift its approach to administering monkeypox vaccines to allow them to be divided up into much smaller doses, which the U.S. has done in order to vaccinate many more people than the current strategy.

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said during a press conference Friday that Canada has no plans right now to recommend changes to the vaccination strategy to allow for fractional doses to be administered across the country.

“We’ve been connecting, of course, with our U.S. colleagues to look at their strategy and see if we can gather as much information as we can. There’s limited data, but I think it is an important approach to explore,” she said.

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“But for now, working together with the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), we’re really pushing out the approach of one dose first to reach as many people as possible in our most highly impacted populations, and we will be looking at the interval and the timing and need for that second dose.” 

WATCH | U.S. moves to stretch monkeypox vaccine supply with smaller doses:

U.S. to stretch monkeypox vaccine supply with smaller doses

2 days ago

Duration 2:10

Americans will receive one-fifth of the standard dose of monkeypox vaccine as U.S. health officials look for a way to immunize more at-risk people with a limited supply of doses. CBC’s Natasha Fatah reports.

The U.S. shifted its vaccination strategy earlier this week to allow for the use of just one fifth of a full dose of the vaccine, made by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, to stretch out supply and cover more people after the approach was deemed safe and effective. 

The vaccine will now be delivered into the skin in the U.S. rather than deeper into a muscle, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization that allowed for the use of fractional doses of the vaccine to people aged 18 and older.

Vaccine supply a challenge, virologist says

“Looking at the global picture, our biggest challenge right now is vaccine supply,” said Alyson Kelvin, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. 

“There’s limited supply worldwide, so we need to find strategies for containing the virus and its outbreaks, and one of those strategies is dose sparing, which is basically the approach the U.S. has taken here.” 

Kelvin said that evidence shows intradermal administration of the vaccines just under the skin provide a “very robust response” with the monkeypox vaccine, also known as Imvamune. 

A vial of the monkeypox vaccine sits on a table at a pop-up vaccination clinic in Los Angeles on Aug. 3. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“Considering that we want to protect as many people as possible and contain the outbreak, this does seem reasonable in a situation where there’s limited vaccine supply compared to the number of cases or the trajectory of cases,” she said.

“We have a lot less cases than the U.S. So I don’t know how that compares to our vaccine supply.” 

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has repeatedly declined to provide the number of monkeypox vaccines Canada has in the national stockpile, citing security concerns, despite providing that number for other vaccines and other countries sharing that information.

Tam said Canada has so far deployed 99,000 vaccines to provinces and territories.

“What we want to do is watch the communities that are getting the intradermal strategy and see how protective it is, and have cases been able to be curved by this,” Kelvin said. 

“And if we’re in that situation where we find that we have not enough vaccines to go around to protect those who need it, then it would be reasonable to look at that as a strategy moving forward.” 

More than 1,000 cases in Canada

There are now 1,059 monkeypox cases across Canada, with the bulk of them in Ontario and Quebec, amid a growing global outbreak that has spread to dozens of countries around the world in the past few months. 

Tam said Canada will soon move to testing wastewater in different regions of the country to better track the spread of the disease, also known as MPXV, building off the infrastructure developed to monitor COVID-19 in the pandemic. 

“Moving forward, it could form part of our monitoring of the disease activity going up and down across the country,” she said, noting that the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg had developed a new method to detect the virus in wastewater. “We’ve now landed on something that can probably be utilized more broadly.”

WATCH | Canada records more than 1,000 monkeypox cases:

Canada now has more than 1,000 monkeypox cases

2 days ago

Duration 2:02

As Canada hits more than 1,000 cases of Monkeypox, public health officials say we have enough vaccine supply. In the U.S., health officials are giving smaller doses of the monkeypox vaccine to stretch limited supplies.

In Canada and around the world, the current outbreak of the disease has overwhelmingly affected men who have sex with men and can cause painful lesions that take weeks to heal.

Tam said more than 99 per cent of MPXV cases in Canada are in men and the median age of those infected is 35. Late last month, the PHAC urged gay and bisexual men to practise safe sex and limit the number of sexual partners, in an effort to slow the spread of the virus among sexual networks.

Globally, Tam said there are now more than 31,000 cases reported in more than 91 countries, with a 19 per cent increase in cases this week over the previous week.

Tam said that it was “too soon to tell” if cases were slowing or plateauing in Canada, although there may be “some early signs” that cases are not increasing at the same rate as at the beginning of the outbreak. 

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus classified the outbreak as a global emergency late last month, calling the rapid spread of the virus worldwide an “extraordinary” situation.

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Pakistan airline crew sought asylum in Canada: spokesperson – CTV News

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Typically, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight attendants who arrive in Toronto stay at a hotel overnight, meet back up with their crew the next day and then fly to their next destination.

But increasingly often, PIA attendants aren’t showing up, the airline says. According to PIA, at least eight flight attendants disappeared over the last year and a half.

They have abandoned their jobs and are believed to have sought asylum in Canada, a spokesperson for the government-owned airline says.

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Increased occurrences

Abdullah Hafeez Khan said at least eight flight attendants “have gone missing” after flying to Pearson International Airport in Toronto. He said these incidents have been happening over the last 10 years, but are now occurring more frequently.

“Since probably October of 2022, the number of the people that have opted asylum has increased tremendously,” Khan said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from Karachi, Pakistan, where the airline is based.

“None of those crew members that disappeared in the last one-and-a-half years have come back. So they were granted asylum for one way or the other, and that probably has encouraged others to do so.”

The missing employees were fired immediately and lost their company benefits, Khan said.

Why did they flee?

Khan said he could only speculate as to why the flight attendants would flee.

The Canadian government underscored the volatile situation in Pakistan, warning in a travel advisory of a “high threat of terrorism,” along with threats of civil unrest, sectarian violence and kidnapping.

“The security situation is fragile and unpredictable,” the Canadian travel advisory reads. “Incidents are typically attributed to extremism, ethnic divisions, sectarian strife, regional political disputes and the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan.”

It added that many deaths and injuries have occurred from bombings, shootings and other terrorist attacks at a wide range of targets.

Since Khan isn’t in contact with any of the missing employees, he says, he assumes they decided to seek asylum in Canada for economic and social reasons.

“So I naturally assumed that all of them have been given asylum because I don’t think they would be living there illegally,” he said, adding they may already have family connections in Canada who can support them.

In this June 8, 2013, photo, a Pakistan International Airlines plane moments before take off from the Benazir Bhutto airport in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

‘PR crisis’

Khan called the flight attendants’ disappearances a “PR crisis” for PIA that is “bad” for business amid a crew shortage.

The airline is in talks with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Pakistani law enforcement agencies to potentially create a “legal safeguard” to curtail flight crew from seeking asylum, he said.

When asked about the PIA flight attendants’ disappearances, Erin Kerbel, spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, said the department couldn’t comment on specific cases due to privacy legislation.

In response to questions about PIA’s claim that discussions are underway about the issue, a spokesperson for the CBSA said it could not confirm any information.

“The Canada Border Services Agency does not provide comment or details on specific individuals, including any discussions that would take place with airline companies, as an individual’s border and immigration information is considered private and protected by the Privacy Act,” Maria Ladouceur said in an email to CTVNews.ca.

Since the crew members’ disappearances, Khan said, the airline has “done numerous things to curtail that.”

For instance, the airline is only staffing Toronto-bound flights with crew members who have “established linkages” in Pakistan, such as children, spouses or parents, as well as those who have worked in the organization for more than 15 years.

The airline avoids sending to Toronto those who are single or don’t have established family ties in Pakistan, he said.

Khan said he and the airline are no longer in contact with the flight attendants because, they discovered, they usually change their phone numbers soon after disappearing in Toronto.

Who disappeared?

The PIA flight attendants who vanished in Canada are seasoned pros in their late 30s or 40s, some of whom have worked for the airline for as long as two decades, Khan said.

“There was never any sign from them that they would seek something like that,” he said. “So that is something that is bothering us in the matter because working with people who have been working with you for a long time and then something happens like this is pretty unexpected.”

In one of the latest cases in February, the crew members were waiting to take the bus back to the airport from the hotel in Toronto and one of the flight attendants didn’t show up, Khan said.

The airline was unable to reach the flight attendant on her cellphone or hotel landline so, Khan says, they asked hotel management to check if she was OK.

“When the crew went there, she left her uniform there with a note saying, ‘Thank you PIA,'” Khan said, which he interpreted as a genuine sentiment of gratitude for her more than 15 years of service with PIA rather than a taunt.

Khan said the crew members who disappeared were “family values people” who had good careers in Pakistan.

Asylum policies

Individuals can make a refugee claim in Canada at a port of entry upon arrival or online if they are already in Canada, according to the Canadian government’s website.

Canadian immigration or border officials will determine if the person is eligible for a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. All claimants must undergo health and security screenings, the government says.

If eligible to make a claim in Canada, refugee claimants can access social assistance, education, health services, emergency housing and legal aid pending a decision on their claim. Most can apply for a work permit after a medical examination.

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Alberta's population surges by record-setting 202,000 people: Here's where they all came from – CBC.ca

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Alberta smashed population-growth records in the past year, mainly due to people moving to the province from across Canada and around the world.

The province’s population surged to just over 4.8 million as of Jan. 1, according to new estimates released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

That’s an increase of 202,324 residents compared with a year earlier, which marks — by far — the largest annual increase on record.

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Alberta also broke a national record in 2023 for interprovincial migration, with a net gain of 55,107 people.

“This was the largest gain in interprovincial migration nationally since comparable data became available in 1972,” Statistics Canada said in a release.


Most of the interprovincial migrants came from Ontario and British Columbia.

Statistics Canada estimates that 38,236 Ontarians moved to Alberta last year, versus 14,860 Albertans who moved to Ontario, for a net gain of 23,376 people.

Similarly, an estimated 37,650 British Columbians moved to Alberta, compared to 22,400 Albertans who moved to B.C., for a net gain of 15,250.


All told, interprovincial migration accounted for 27 per cent of Alberta’s population growth over the past year.

That put it just ahead of permanent immigration, which accounted for 26 per cent, and well ahead of natural population increase (more births than deaths), which accounted for eight per cent.

The largest component, however, was temporary international migration.

Non-permanent residents from other countries accounted for 39 per cent of the province’s population growth in the past year, reflecting a national trend.


Canada’s population reached 40,769,890 on Jan. 1, according to Statistics Canada estimates, which is up 3.2 per cent from a year ago.

“Most of Canada’s 3.2-per-cent population growth rate stemmed from temporary immigration in 2023,” Statistics Canada noted.

“Without temporary immigration, that is, relying solely on permanent immigration and natural increase (births minus deaths), Canada’s population growth would have been almost three times less (1.2 per cent).”

Alberta’s population, meanwhile, grew by 4.4 per cent year-over-year.

Alberta now represents 11.8 per cent of the country’s population, its largest proportion on record. 

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Why Canada's record population growth is helping – and hurting – the economy – CTV News

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Canada has recorded the fastest population growth in 66 years, increasing by 1.3 million people, or 3.2 per cent, in 2023, according to a new report from Statistics Canada.

The country has not seen such growth since 1957, when the spike was attributed to the baby boom and an influx of immigrants fleeing Hungary.

The vast majority of Canada’s growth last year was due to immigration, with temporary residents — which includes foreign workers and international students — making up the largest proportion of newcomers.

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“We need people coming to Canada to help with our economy,” says Matti Siemiatycki, a professor of planning at the University of Toronto. “There are many jobs and professions where there are vacancies, and that is having an impact, whether in the healthcare sector or trades and construction sector.”

Siemiatycki adds immigrants also bring “ingenuity… resources… and culture” to Canada.

Newcomers are relied on to help keep pace with Canada’s aging population and declining fertility rates, but the influx also presents a challenge for a country struggling to build the homes and infrastructure needed for immigrants.

“It’s an incredibly large shock for the economic system to absorb because of just the sheer number of people coming into the country in a short period of time,” says Robert Kavcic. a senior economist and director with BMO Capital Markets.

“The reality is population can grow extremely fast, but the supply side of the economy like housing and service infrastructure, think health care and schools, can only catch up at a really gradual pace,” Kavcic says. “So there is a mismatch right now.”

The impact of that mismatch can most acutely be seen in the cost of rent, services and housing.

In December, Kavcic wrote in a note that Canada needs to build 170,000 new housing units every three months to keep up with population growth, noting the industry is struggling to complete 220,000 units in a full year.

To address this, Ottawa has announced plans to cap the number of new temporary residents while also reducing the number of international student visas, a move economists say could offer some relief when it comes to housing and the cost of living.

“The arithmetic on the caps actual works relatively well because it would take us back down to 1 per cent population growth which we have been used to over the last decade and which is more or less absorbable by the economy,” Kavcic says. “The question is whether or not we see policy makers follow through and hit those numbers.”

Economists believe these changes could help ease inflationary pressures and may make a Bank of Canada rate cut more likely, but could also lead to slower GDP growth.

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