Hinshaw will give Alberta COVID-19 update after Shandro calls Pfizer dose change ‘frustrating’ – Global News

Alberta’s top doctor will provide a COVID-19 update Tuesday afternoon, including current case numbers, hospitalizations and health measures.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw is scheduled to speak in Edmonton at 3:30 p.m. Global News will live stream her address in this article post.

On Monday, Step 1 of Alberta’s reopening plan came into effect. Restaurants were able to re-open dine-in service with restrictions including capacity limits, distancing and seating households together.

That same day, Alberta Health confirmed five additional deaths and 269 new cases of COVID-19.

Hinshaw said Monday officials also recorded an additional 25 variant cases of the virus since Friday.

Speaking at a news conference Tuesday morning about expanding rapid testing, Health Minister Tyler Shandro was asked about the Pfizer vaccine vials.

Health Canada has authorized a label change to Pfizer–BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine that will allow six doses of the precious drug to be extracted per vial.

Up until now, Canada has been extracting five doses from a single vial of the vaccine.

The pharmaceutical company recently pushed Health Canada to amend the label information on vials in Canada, as it did with the U.S. and Europe.

Getting the sixth dose also requires the use of a special syringe.

“It is frustrating,” Shandro said. “I think we made it clear to the federal government and to Health Canada that when everybody gets the best training, everybody is using the right syringe, we’re only going to get that sixth dose 75 per cent of the time max.

“So it means that the provinces are, in the end — because the federal government has contracted out on the basis of doses, not vials — so it means the provinces are going to end up not getting as many doses, I think.

“But, we’re going to continue to commit to Albertans, we’re going to get vaccines to them as quickly as possible, as soon as we receive them, and we’re going to make sure that we continue focusing on the smallest amount of waste as possible.”

Shandro also said Alberta Health Services “has procured” those special syringes to help extract that sixth dose more often.

“My understanding is there’s no shortage in Alberta of those syringes and we’re going to have the syringes that we need,” he said.

“But… to remind everyone, this is a very small, minor increase in how many more [sixth] doses we’re going to be getting in these vials.

“We’re right now getting a [sixth] dose out of 50 per cent. This is about going from 50 per cent to 75.”

At that news conference Tuesday morning, the province also announced it had expanded its rapid testing program to include asymptomatic staff at long-term care and designated supportive living sites.

That means, Alberta’s 36,000 staff will have access to rapid COVID-19 tests once a week. If a site has a positivity rate of five per cent or higher, they will be asked to increase testing to twice weekly.

Researchers are still looking at the effectiveness of these rapid tests in asymptomatic individuals. So, a pilot program has been deployed at the Suncor Base Plant in Fort McMurray and in the First Nations and Metis community of Fort McKay.

Seven-thousand rapid tests are being used for employees at the Suncor site and community and health-care workers in Fort McKay for asymptomatic workplace testing.

Alberta has already deployed rapid testing at:

• 33 COVID-19 assessment centres
• 29 hospitals
• Seven homeless shelters
• Mobile testing facilities that test residents and staff of long-term care and designated supportive living facilities identified as potential outbreak sites.

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