Canada and the COVID-19 vaccine

As more regions of Canada enter lockdown and increase restrictions in an effort to contain the alarming spread of COVID-19, many government and public health officials are pointing to promising coronavirus vaccine candidates as hope that the pandemic will one day end. Over the last few weeks, both Pfizer and Moderna Inc. announced that their respective vaccines appeared to be 94-95 per cent effective in Phase 3 clinical trials. On December 1, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that Canada has secured 20 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, even before it has been approved by Health Canada.

How does the vaccine work? CBC reported that the vaccine will require two doses, taken three weeks apart. With a population of more than 35 million people in Canada, that means more than 70 million doses in total are required. Canada has signed agreements with manufacturers to receive more than that amount, but it is likely they will arrive in staggered shipments throughout 2021.

When will Canadians have access to the vaccine? On December 10^th, 2020, Health Canada approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine establishing that it meets the “stringent safety, efficacy and quality requirements for use in Canada.” Pfizer’s first batch of 249,000 doses will arrive in Canada before the end of December 2020, with the first shipment expected to arrive as early as next week. Another four million doses are expected between January and March of 2021.

In anticipation, Canada is preparing 14 locations across the country to receive and distribute the vaccines on a priority basis, with the intention that all Canadians who want to be vaccinated will eventually have access free of charge.

What will this mean for essential workers? “The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), an independent body that advises the Public Health Agency of Canada, recently published a guidance on the prioritization of initial doses of COVID-19 vaccine(s) recommended for the following populations:

• Residents and staff of congregate living settings that provide care for seniors
• Adults 70 years of age and older, beginning with adults 80 years of age and older, then decreasing the age limit by 5-year increments to age 70 years as supply becomes available
• Health care workers (including all those who work in health care settings and personal support workers whose work involves direct contact with patients)
• Adults in Indigenous communities where infection can have disproportionate consequences”

Ross Upshur of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health stated that virologists understand the pressing need to come up with an answer to COVID-19. But he said more work is needed to ensure the cure isn’t worse than the disease. “Everybody wants this over yesterday, but you can’t will away a pandemic and it would [be] foolish and imprudent to override our usual ways of thinking about safety and quality of vaccine.” Others, such as infectious disease specialist Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, note that we need to do more than simply wait for a vaccine to protect our essential workers.