A University of Ottawa infectious disease specialist suggests the prime minister’s goal to vaccinate a majority of Canadians by next September “may be reasonable” given there are several COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
Dr. Earl Brown says that while everything is looking good for a COVID-19 vaccine, Health Canada has not approved a vaccine for use in Canada yet.
As the premiers urge the federal government to provide timelines on when a COVID-19 vaccine will be available to the provinces, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his target is to immunize more than half of all Canadians by September, 2021.
“That may be optimistic, but that may be reasonable given that we’ve got three vaccine candidates,” said Dr. Brown, a former member of the H1N1 vaccine task group in Canada.
“The fact is there is no vaccine; a vaccine is a medicine, which is licenced for use in Canada on humans and it would have a drug number. Nothing like that exists. Now, maybe it will in a week, two weeks, a month, a few weeks.”
During an interview on CTV News at Six with anchor Stefan Keyes, Dr. Brown said there are three very “promising” vaccine candidates, based on the press releases and published phase one and two trials.
“Everything is looking good, but you really have to know that you’ve got a vaccine that’s passed muster, and we don’t know that yet. So we can’t count our chickens before they hatch,” said Dr. Brown, noting officials are demanding timelines for delivery before the vaccine receives approval.
“You really want to know you’ve got something before you go committing yourself. Those are the realities of being careful before you move, and we’re doing the minimum care – which is it has to be passing Health Canada review and get approved.”
Health Canada says Canada’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be approved before Christmas. Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma said the review of the Pfizer vaccine candidate is the most advanced.
This week, the federal government suggested three million Canadians could receive the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of March.
“If we can vaccinate three million health care workers, long-term care facility residents alone between now and the end of March, that’s a tremendous feat,” said Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Abdu Sharkawy, during an interview with CTV News Ottawa.
Prime Minister Trudeau told reporters that Canada no longer has production capacity to produce life-saving vaccines.
Appearing on CTV’s Your Morning this week, Dr. Brown said Canadian administrations simply took their “eye off the ball” for vaccine production.
Keyes asked Brown if it’s too late for Canada to get back in the game for a COVID-19 vaccine.
“Well it’s too late on the short term for this pandemic, but we got to get back in to the game. We have to have a readiness to respond to a pandemic with a vaccine,” said Brown Saturday evening
“So our vaccine facilities have essentially dwindled in Canada and so we aren’t able to make a set of vaccine. We should be able to make enough vaccine to give everybody two shots –76 million doses thereabouts. So we should plan to be able to do that within a year with some standing facility.”
Brown adds it’s very tough to do anything financially with a vaccine facility.
“It’s very hard to sell a vaccine or make money on vaccines if that’s what you want to do in the meantime between pandemics.”
Brown says Canada will need to come up with a plan for the future.
VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.
In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.
The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.
Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”
Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
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.
