TORONTO — Health Canada has approved the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for use in this country with the first doses expected to be delivered by Christmas.
Canada is now the second country in the world after the U.S. to approve the Moderna shot, the second coronavirus vaccine to get the green light in the country’s mass immunization effort. Two weeks ago, the federal health agency approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Health Canada has deemed the Moderna vaccine effective and safe for use on Canadians, which means deliveries of the first set of doses will begin imminently, weeks faster than the original timeline to receive shipments in January.
“Canada has an internationally recognized process of independent review, and I know that our best experts have upheld this highest standard,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference. “Now that Health Canada has approved the Moderna vaccine, we have the green light to start rolling it out across the country.”
Trudeau has said previously that Canada will receive up to 168,000 doses of the vaccine this month, with deliveries arriving between 24 and 48 hours after approval, as per the government’s contract with the U.S. biotech company.
“We know that this pandemic doesn’t start to end until we have vaccination of millions and millions of people which is why we’re continuing to ensure that everything is done safely and responsibly, to make those vaccines available as quickly as possible and we all look forward to things being much better in the spring,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau added that Canada is expected to have acquired 1.2 million doses of the two approved vaccines by the end of January, but Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force is still working with Pfizer and Moderna to confirm how many doses of each it will have by that timeframe.
“We have a number of planning assumptions for that, and moving forward in terms of both Moderna and Pfizer products, and we’re working actively to confirm those planning assumptions, turn them into facts as we move forward,” Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the top military general in charge of Canada’s vaccine distribution, told reporters on Wednesday.
Fortin added that while the government expects more than a million doses by the end of January, he expects the rollout to really ramp up in the subsequent months.
“I anticipate a significant growth in quantities available in February (and) March,” he said. “I would be speculating as to what exactly that looks like, but as I indicated before, we have daily conversations with the manufacturers, and we will increase this frequency with Moderna as well.”
In total, Moderna has promised 40 million doses to Canada by the end of 2021.
“Today’s authorization is one more tool in our toolbox to bring COVID-19 under control,” Dr. Supriya Sharma, the chief medical advisor for Health Canada, said at a press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday.
It’s another crucial moment in the fight against the novel coronavirus as each vaccine candidate comes with its own unique set of advantages and barriers. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is already in the arms of thousands of Canadians, needs to be kept at temperatures between -60 C and -80 C until injection, while the Moderna vaccine can be kept stable at just -20 C.
‘THE WORKHORSE VACCINE’
“The elephant is in the room that the Moderna vaccine is coming and probably the rollout of that vaccine is really going to change the landscape more than anything else,” Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor at McMaster University, told CTVNews.ca during a phone interview on Wednesday.
“You don’t have to set up a clinic right beside where you have these ultra-cold fridges,” he said. Instead, health-care workers can administer the Moderna vaccine bedside in long-term care homes, he said. And the immunization task force can likely deliver the Moderna shots to small rural hospitals and remote northern regions that couldn’t facilitate the freezer requirements of the Pfizer product.
More Canadians are likely to get the Moderna vaccine than the Pfizer one, he added.
“This is the game-changer vaccine for sure,” he said. “For our long-term strategy for vaccinating all Canadians, the Moderna is probably going to be the workhorse vaccine. The Pfizer will probably be a vaccine in urban centres, in places where they’re able to set up the clinics that can do the Pfizer vaccine.”
WHO WILL GET IT AND WHEN?
Health Canada has approved the Moderna vaccine for use in Canadians aged 18 and older, but it will likely be many months before healthy adults who are not on the front lines get inoculated and still “several days” before the most vulnerable receive the shot, said Dr. Ronald St. John, the first Director-General of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Public Health Agency of Canada. While the Moderna shipments are coming this week, it’s just the first step in a logistical process, he told CTV News Channel.
“The plane arrives at the airport but then there’s a couple of steps, quite a few steps that have to take place from the airport to eventually end up in somebody’s arm,” he said. After Health Canada approved the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 9, it took another four days for the first shipment to land in Canada on Dec. 13, and another day before the first health-care workers were immunized.
As with the Pfizer vaccine, the Canadian government’s immunization task force has outlined which Canadians will be at the front of the line for the Moderna shot, including health-care workers and vulnerable people in long-term care facilities.
To boost the immunization effort, the Canadian government has set up another 56 distribution sites (in addition to the 14 already operating) to administer doses to the prioritized groups.
“We’re going to grow the number of sites as we get more stability data and we’re able to further distribute down from those sites to additional sites,” Fortin said. “There’ll be a better spread.”
It is expected that the territories will receive more than the per capita percentage of Moderna vaccines since officials made the decision not to send the Pfizer shots to the North, where they lack the necessary ultra-cold storage capabilities. This time, the territories are well-equipped.
Last week, the Canadian Armed Forces delivered to the territories five freezers that can keep the Moderna doses stable at -20 C.
“With the unique situation in the North, the isolated communities, lack of access to let’s say tertiary health-care facilities and so on, the planning sort of assumption has been to really deliver enough vaccine to be able to cover 75 per cent of their population, so that we’re not making multiple trips to a small community,” said Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief officer of public health.
“I think it’s really in a sense, get it all up there and then they can start vaccinating their populations as a whole.”
Fortin added shipments of the vaccine are expected to arrive in the territories beginning on Monday.
MODERNA VS. PFIZER
Both the Moderna and Pfizer shots are messenger RNA vaccines, which send a genetic code to cells to train them to develop an immune response to COVID-19. Early data suggests both are more than 90 per cent effective at fending off the virus, including strains that Health Canada said on Wednesday were “similar” to the new U.K. variant identified this month.
While the two products have much in common, one of the key differences is in their distribution plans. While Pfizer has been shipping its own vaccines with UPS, Canada will be in charge of getting the Moderna shipments across the country once they are delivered and have contracted Innomar Strategies and FedEx Express Canada to do the job. Earlier this month, officials confirmed that FedEx Express Canada and Innomar will be picking up Canada’s Moderna doses in Europe, where they have been kept on dry ice with temperature-monitoring devices. They will be flying them to a central location in Canada from where the allotments for each region will be distributed. The vaccines will be kept at Innomar distribution facilities across the country, including a 160,000-square-foot space in Ontario, all of which have controlled-temperature storage capabilities as low as -25 C, colder than required for the Moderna vaccine.
“Innomar will safely and securely store the vaccines in its storage facilities, which are equipped to store complex pharmaceutical products,” said a statement from Innomar on Wednesday. “Before the vaccines are shipped, teams will put the vaccine in packages that support the temperature requirements specified by the manufacturer.”
SPEED CONCERNS
While some Canadians have expressed concern about the unprecedented speed with which COVID-19 vaccines have been approved, health experts continue to stress that corners were not cut and standards were not lowered. The latest Health Canada safety assessment began on Oct. 12, when Moderna submitted its candidate for evaluation and a number of steps before that were done in parallel, said Dr. Hassan Masri, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.
“Canada has one of the highest most stringent requirements [for vaccine approval],” he told CTV News Channel on Wednesday. “Why this vaccine was approved more quickly and developed quicker is because all the phase one, phase two, phase three [steps] were happening simultaneously. All the red-taping and bureaucracy were eliminated, and there was a lot of funding for this.”
Health Canada officials stressed on Wednesday that the agency’s standards were maintained throughout the “rolling review” of the vaccine.
“Although this process was completed in a shorter time frame, Health Canada’s rigorous standards were upheld,” Dr. Sharma said in Ottawa on Wednesday. “Under an interim order, Health Canada allows vaccine manufacturers to submit data to us as it becomes available and for Health Canada experts to start the review process right away.”
Moderna has agreed to a set of terms and conditions on the vaccine’s approval that include continuing to provide Health Canada with information about the shot’s safety, effectiveness and quality.
While the new vaccine approval has been called a “game-changer” in Canada’s COVID-19 fight, the country is still in the midst of a worsening surge of coronavirus infections with many regions entering stricter lockdowns this month.
“While there is a light at the end of the tunnel, we know that there are still challenges ahead,” said Dr. Sharma. “We must all do our best to continue following public health guidelines this holiday season and in the new year.”
With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Rachel Aiello, CTVNews.ca Writer Ben Cousins and The Canadian Press
TORONTO – Will Taylor Swift bring chaos or do we all need to calm down?
It’s a question many Torontonians are asking this week as the city braces for the arrival of Swifties, the massive fan base of one of the world’s biggest pop stars.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to descend on the downtown core for the singer’s six concerts which kick off Thursday at the Rogers Centre and run until Nov. 23.
And while their arrival will be a boon to tourism dollars — the city estimates more than $282 million in economic impact — some worry it could worsen Toronto’s gridlock by clogging streets that already come to a standstill during rush hour.
Swift’s shows are set to collide with sports events at the nearby Scotiabank Arena, including a Raptors game on Friday and a Leafs game on Saturday.
Some residents and local businesses have already adjusted their plans to avoid the area and its planned road closures.
Aahil Dayani says he and some friends intended to throw a birthday bash for one of their pals until they realized it would overlap with the concerts.
“Something as simple as getting together and having dinner is now thrown out the window,” he said.
Dayani says the group rescheduled the gathering for after Swift leaves town. In the meantime, he plans to hunker down at his Toronto residence.
“Her coming into town has kind of changed up my social life,” he added.
“We’re pretty much just not doing anything.”
Max Sinclair, chief executive and founder of A.I. technology firm Ecomtent, suggested his employees avoid the company’s downtown offices on concert days, saying he doesn’t see the point in forcing people to endure potential traffic jams.
“It’s going to be less productive for us, and it’s going to be just a pain for everyone, so it’s easier to avoid it,” Sinclair said.
“We’re a hybrid company, so we can be flexible. It just makes sense.”
Swift’s concerts are the latest pop culture moment to draw attention to Toronto’s notoriously disastrous daily commute.
In June, One Direction singer Niall Horan uploaded a social media video of himself walking through traffic to reach the venue for his concert.
“Traffic’s too bad in Toronto, so we’re walking to the venue,” he wrote in the post.
Toronto Transit Commission spokesperson Stuart Green says the public agency has been working for more than a year on plans to ease the pressure of so many Swifties in one confined area.
“We are preparing for something that would be akin to maybe the Beatles coming in the ‘60s,” he said.
Dozens of buses and streetcars have been added to transit routes around the stadium, and the TTC has consulted the city on potential emergency scenarios.
Green will be part of a command centre operated by the City of Toronto and staffed by Toronto police leaders, emergency services and others who have handled massive gatherings including the Raptors’ NBA championship parade in 2019.
“There may be some who will say we’re over-preparing, and that’s fair,” Green said.
“But we know based on what’s happened in other places, better to be over-prepared than under-prepared.”
Metrolinx, the agency for Ontario’s GO Transit system, has also added extra trips and extended hours in some regions to accommodate fans looking to travel home.
A day before Swift’s first performance, the city began clearing out tents belonging to homeless people near the venue. The city said two people were offered space in a shelter.
“As the area around Rogers Centre is expected to receive a high volume of foot traffic in the coming days, this area has been prioritized for outreach work to ensure the safety of individuals in encampments, other residents, businesses and visitors — as is standard for large-scale events,” city spokesperson Russell Baker said in a statement.
Homeless advocate Diana Chan McNally questioned whether money and optics were behind the measure.
“People (in the area) are already in close proximity to concerts, sports games, and other events that generate massive amounts of traffic — that’s nothing new,” she said in a statement.
“If people were offered and willingly accepted a shelter space, free of coercion, I support that fully — that’s how it should happen.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans lined up outside the gates of Toronto’s Rogers Centre Wednesday, with hopes of snagging some of the pop star’s merchandise on the eve of the first of her six sold-out shows in the city.
Swift is slated to perform at the venue from Thursday to Saturday, and the following week from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23, with concert merchandise available for sale on some non-show days.
Swifties were all smiles as they left the merch shop, their arms full of sweaters and posters bearing pictures of the star and her Eras Tour logo.
Among them was Zoe Haronitis, 22, who said she waited in line for about two hours to get $300 worth of merchandise, including some apparel for her friends.
Haronitis endured the autumn cold and the hefty price tag even though she hasn’t secured a concert ticket. She said she’s hunting down a resale ticket and plans to spend up to $600.
“I haven’t really budgeted anything,” Haronitis said. “I don’t care how much money I spent. That was kind of my mindset.”
The megastar’s merchandise costs up to $115 for a sweater, and $30 for tote bags and other accessories.
Rachel Renwick, 28, also waited a couple of hours in line for merchandise, but only spent about $70 after learning that a coveted blue sweater and a crewneck had been snatched up by other eager fans before she got to the shop. She had been prepared to spend much more, she said.
“The two prized items sold out. I think a lot more damage would have been done,” Renwick said, adding she’s still determined to buy a sweater at a later date.
Renwick estimated she’s spent about $500 in total on “all-things Eras Tour,” including her concert outfit and merchandise.
The long queue for Swift merch is just a snapshot of what the city will see in the coming days. It’s estimated that up to 500,000 visitors from outside Toronto will be in town during the concert period.
Tens of thousands more are also expected to attend Taylgate’24, an unofficial Swiftie fan event scheduled to be held at the nearby Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Meanwhile, Destination Toronto has said it anticipates the economic impact of the Eras Tour could grow to $282 million as the money continues to circulate.
But for fans like Haronitis, the experience in Toronto comes down to the Swiftie community. Knowing that Swift is going to be in the city for six shows and seeing hundreds gather just for merchandise is “awesome,” she said.
Even though Haronitis hasn’t officially bought her ticket yet, she said she’s excited to see the megastar.
“It’s literally incredible.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
OTTAWA – Via Rail is asking for a judicial review on the reasons why Canadian National Railway Co. has imposed speed restrictions on its new passenger trains.
The Crown corporation says it is seeking the review from the Federal Court after many attempts at dialogue with the company did not yield valid reasoning for the change.
It says the restrictions imposed last month are causing daily delays on Via Rail’s Québec City-Windsor corridor, affecting thousands of passengers and damaging Via Rail’s reputation with travellers.
CN says in a statement that it imposed the restrictions at rail crossings given the industry’s experience and known risks associated with similar trains.
The company says Via has asked the courts to weigh in even though Via has agreed to buy the equipment needed to permanently fix the issues.
Via said in October that no incidents at level crossings have been reported in the two years since it put 16 Siemens Venture trains into operation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
