Despite promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates on the horizon worldwide, experts say Canada needs to overcome major hurdles before it can develop rollout strategies to get the right shot into Canadians’ arms.
News that Pfizer’s vaccine candidate has shown promising preliminary results in Phase 3 clinical trials made headlines this week, but specific data on which patients benefited from the trial, which could inform rollout plans, has yet to be released.
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the country needs “a very sophisticated” rollout plan that will require “high degrees of logistical support.”
But determining who should get a vaccine first is extremely challenging without specific data on who it would help most.
“The rollout is going to be the most difficult part of this vaccine and that’s the part I think everyone is starting to think of today,” Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases specialist at St Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, told CBC’s The National.
“If the vaccine data shows that the highest risk populations also have the highest reasonable benefit here, I think that prioritization scheme works very well and hopefully that’s the target for the first 10 million doses.”
Pfizer says initial data suggests its COVID-19 vaccine is 90 per cent effective. Medical experts call it encouraging, but have a lot of questions. 2:05
But who is most at risk of severe illness and transmission of COVID-19 is still in question, meaning Canada might need to develop several contingency plans.
“If we decide to start with health-care workers, it’s going to be a completely different strategy than if we start by vaccinating the elderly in long-term care facilities,” Dr. Caroline Quach, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), said on The Currenton Tuesday.
“So it’s difficult currently for provinces and territories to have a good idea and a good understanding of how they need to deploy.”
The federal government has reportedly secured enough syringes and needles for provinces and territories to vaccinate all Canadians who wish to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, but Quach says the specific plans are still unclear.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said in a statement to CBC News the federal government is working with provinces and territories to approve and distribute a vaccine as quickly as possible.
Dr. Caroline Quach says a lack of key data makes it difficult for provinces and territories to have a good understanding of how they need to deploy a potential vaccine. (CBC)
“It is anticipated that in the early stages of rollout, supply availability will be limited,” a spokesperson said.
“The quantity and schedule of availability of vaccines will be the subject of ongoing discussion with provinces and territories to manage expectations and plans for delivery.”
The NACI has released preliminary recommendations that prioritize the elderly and others at severe risk of illness: health-care workers, front-line staff and those with lower access to health care including Indigenous populations.
But to know who should be first in line, the NACI and government officials need to know who fell ill in the vaccinated group compared with the placebo group during clinical trials.
Without answers, governments across Canada will need to hedge their bets.
“They may have to work on two to three plans in parallel,” Quach said. “Just in case one of those will be picked as the first strategy.”
Logistical challenges
How to deploy a vaccine across the country, especially to remote communities such as First Nations, is also a key consideration.
Pfizer’s vaccine candidate needs to be stored at –70 C to –80 C, but commercial refrigerators typically go down to –15 C at the most.
Given that strict temperature requirement, Chaga suspects that Pfizer’s vaccine would be distributed much differently than a typical vaccine.
“We’re probably going to have centralized hubs and teams going out from those hubs to do mass immunization campaigns,” he said. “Rather than what we’re seeing with the flu vaccine with pharmacies and physician offices involved with distribution.”
But Quach says unlike influenza vaccines, there may not actually be enough doses of COVID-19 vaccines to make a significant impact — especially early on.
“We don’t have enough vaccines to vaccinate all Canadians,” she said, adding that COVID-19 vaccines could be distributed over the next 12 to 18 months. “The rollout will be slow.”
Alyson Kelvin says she’s discouraged by the fact that Canada has not released preliminary plans for the rollout of a potential vaccine. (Liam Richards/The Canadian Press)
Lack of plan concerning
Alyson Kelvin, an assistant professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax and virologist at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology, says she is eager to see a vaccine rollout plan for Canada.
“We need a good strategy to get that out, we need a strategy to get it to our front-line health-care workers, the people who keep our daily lives running, the grocery store workers, as well as we also need to start thinking about the under-served communities.”
“Just because we have a vaccine doesn’t mean we’re done. We need to think through how we’re going to get this into people’s arms and who should get it first,” she said. “This is going to be a huge undertaking … it concerns me that I haven’t seen a plan.”
Quach says, unlike the U.S.’s minimum requirement of 50 per cent efficacy for a COVID-19 vaccine, Health Canada has not set a bar for approving a vaccine.
“Being close to our neighbour, we are a little bit stuck with what they are going to decide,” Quach said.
Kelvin said the NACI recommendations were a good start, but were not released in a way that’s easy for average Canadians to understand. It’s also not yet clear whether the federal, provincial and territorial governments will follow those guidelines.
“Information will have to be easily accessible to the public, policy makers and stakeholders for the more effective use of a vaccine when it becomes available,” she said.
“Pharmacists and nurses or those approved to vaccinate the public will need accurate information about the vaccine being given and the rollout plan as it is put in place.”
The federal government has taken a very aggressive vaccine buying approach and has already bought millions of doses of Pfizer’s vaccine with the hope it works. And governments are already planning how to distribute vaccines when they’re available, including who will go first. 1:47
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
