Effective immediately, Canada is pausing distribution of the recent shipment of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines.
Here is the statement Health Canada released around 6pm on a Friday about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
Officials and Ministers have been asked about issues around Emergent Biosolutions and connections to J&J many times, including this week #cdnpolihttps://t.co/ChamncF9ATpic.twitter.com/6OO4B52RBl
The recent shipment of the one-dose COVID-19 vaccines from Johnson & Johnson won’t be used, as Health Canada has learned these doses were partially processed in the Baltimore plant that ruined 15 million doses at the beginning of April.
That plant was forced to close, while the United States Food and Drug Administration investigates.
In a statement, Health Canada says those doses will only be released when “once Health Canada is satisfied that they meet the Department’s high standards for quality, safety and efficacy.” Health Canada is currently working with the FDA and Janssen to check these vaccines.
A spokesperson for Health Minister Patty Hajdu says “the government was made aware of this information today – the same day Health Canada decided to communicate it with Canadians.”
The office of Procurement Minister Anita Anand released a statement, which says “an initial shipment of approximately 300,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine landed in Canada on Wednesday, April 28. As Health Canada’s review of these vaccines is ongoing, and it works with the supplier to obtain all of the needed information, the government awaits further information prior to their release.”
A Conservative Member of Parliament from Alberta is calling out the Liberal government for the delay on pausing the distribution.
It’s inexcusable that this was released on a Friday afternoon mere hours after the Health Minister was at committee. Why was this communicated at the eleventh hour before shots went into arms? We knew these vaccines were coming for weeks. Major screw up with huge implications. https://t.co/BoSSIGAyha
— Michelle Rempel Garner (@MichelleRempel) April 30, 2021
MP Michelle Rempel Garner, of Calgary Nose Hill, says the federal government should’ve released this information earlier “before shots went into arms.”
Boxes of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are arranged at a vaccination centre in Ronquieres, Belgium, on April 6, 2021.
Yves Herman/Reuters
AstraZeneca said its COVID-19 vaccine sales were $275 million in the first quarter and it is on track to deliver 200 million doses a month from April, as better-than-expected results and a second half growth forecast boosted its shares.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot again defended the vaccine rollout on Friday, saying that Anglo-Swedish drugmaker had not overpromised on its ability to supply shots, as he defended big cuts in deliveries that prompted a European Union lawsuit.
AstraZeneca, which has said it will not make a profit from the shot during the pandemic, was reporting financial details of distribution of the vaccine for the first time - including a hit of 3 cents on earnings per share, or a drain of about $40 million on net income.
The effect on the bottom line “will vary quarter by quarter and we remain committed to supplying this vaccine at no profit during the pandemic period,” a spokesman said.
Speaking in a shareholder call, Soriot said the no-profit pledge would likely end some time next year. He added that afterwards, “certainly for the low, middle income countries we have a commitment to stay at either no profit for some parts of the world or at very modest prices”.
The company said the revenue was based on delivery of about 68 million doses, adding that European sales were $224 million, emerging markets $43 million and $8 million in the rest of the world. Sales of $275 million for the 68 million doses equates to a price tag of around $4 per shot.
When including production and distribution from partners such as the Serum Institute of India, more than 300 million doses have been supplied globally, it added.
AstraZeneca, working with the vaccine’s inventor Oxford University, was one of the leaders in the global race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Its cheap and easily transportable shot was hailed as a milestone in the fight against the crisis, but has since faced a series of setbacks.
“Shipments (of COVID-19 vaccines) are increasing as manufacturing improves,” Soriot said during a briefing, adding that it was on track to deliver 200 million doses a month.
“We never overpromised, we communicated what we thought we would achieve at the time,” he said.
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AstraZeneca shares were up 5.2 per cent at 7,784 pence at 1507 GMT, putting them on track for their best day since early November. The stock, which hit record highs in July 2020 due to optimism around the vaccine, ended last year 4 per cent lower.
The results come after a bruising start to the year as the drugmaker struggles with production of its vaccine and faces a legal battle after cutting deliveries to Europe, while regulators probe rare blood clots in people who got the shot.
“Despite the intense operational and political challenges created by AZN’s COVID-19 vaccine roll out, the core business continues to perform above market expectations in a most challenging quarter, demonstrating strength across therapeutic areas and geographies,” Citigroup analysts said in a note.
VACCINE RACE
Pfizer, whose COVID-19 vaccine co-developed with German partner BioNTech is several times more costly than AstraZeneca’s, has forecast $15 billion for its share of sales, with analysts expecting as much as $18 billion on average.
BioNTech expects close to 10 billion euros ($12.1 billion) in revenues from committed vaccine deliveries this year but raised the prospect of more supply deals.
Moderna in February said it was expecting sales of $18.4 billion from its own vaccine this year.
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Before AstraZeneca’s earnings, market researcher GlobalData said it expected annual sales of $278 million this year and next for the drugmaker’s coronavirus vaccine, branded Vaxzevria.
AstraZeneca said it is working as fast as possible to compile data to apply for U.S. approval. Soriot said there was nothing wrong with the data, but the dataset was very large.
RESILIENT
AstraZeneca’s core business has proved resilient, with the drugmaker sticking to its forecast for 2021 on Friday and predicting better times ahead.
This guidance does not include any impact from sales of the vaccine and its $39 billion purchase of Alexion, which is expected to close in the third quarter.
Total revenue of $7.32 billion for the three months to March exceeded analysts’ expectations of $6.94 billion, while core earnings of $1.63 cents per share beat a consensus of $1.48.
Quarterly sales growth was driven by best-selling lung cancer drug Tagrisso, up 17 per cent to $1.15 billion, while revenues from heart and diabetes drug Farxiga jumped to a better-than-expected $625 million, on new prescriptions for heart failure.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he's still counting on the United States to share some of its Oxford-AstraZeneca surplus with Canada. Trudeau says it is not about taking vaccines from the rest of the world, but moving up the timeline of deliveries to Canada.The Canadian Press
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David Ljunggren and Carl O'Donnell, Reuters Published Friday, April 30, 2021 6:42PM EDT
OTTAWA - Pfizer Inc will next week start supplying Canada with COVID-19 vaccine made in its U.S. plant, a senior official said on Friday, making it the second country to receive doses from the Kalamazoo, Michigan facility.
Reuters reported on Thursday that Pfizer had started shipping doses made at the plant to Mexico, the first time the company has delivered abroad from U.S. facilities after a Trump-era restriction on its vaccine exports expired at the end of March.
"I can confirm that as of May 3, the Canadian supply of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will come from its manufacturing site in Kalamazoo," Canada federal Procurement Minister Anita Anand said.
Canada expects to remain on the same schedule, with 2 million doses expected each week in May and 2.4 million doses each week in June, Anand said.
The U.S. government has been under mounting pressure to help countries desperately in need of vaccines, particularly given its own swift vaccination program. Many countries where the virus is still rampant are struggling to acquire vaccine supplies to help tame the pandemic.
Canada has deals with Pfizer for up to 76 million doses. Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE have previously been supplying various countries including Canada and Mexico with doses from Pfizer's main European production plant in Belgium.
Pfizer has shipped more than 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Mexico, making it the country's largest supplier of shots. Pfizer is also shipping 1 million shots to Brazil this week, its health minister said on Wednesday. Brazil signed an agreement in March to acquire 100 million Pfizer shots and it is in talks to purchase 100 million more.
Pfizer will use extra capacity in its U.S. facilities to deliver coronavirus vaccines abroad while continuing to meet its commitment to supply the United States, a source familiar with the matter said, adding the drugmaker will also make shipments from Belgium.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottowa, Carl O'Donnell in New York, Adriana Barrera and Raul Cortes in Mexico City; additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter in Rio De Janiero; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Grant McCool)
In this file photo taken on February 16, 2021 medical worker Robert Gilbertson loads a syringe with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine to be administered by nurses at a vaccination site at Kedren Community Health Center, in South Central Los Angeles, California.Photo by Apu Gomes/AFP
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Canada has made great strides in its vaccination regime in recent weeks. Nevertheless, as tens of thousands of envious locked-down Canadians are well aware, we’re still way behind the United States. At 37 per cent coverage, the United States is now one of the most vaccinated countries on earth. And, unlike Canada, the U.S. does not mandate a four-month gap between its vaccine doses, meaning that Americans are fully immunized 3.5 months sooner than their Canadian counterparts.
It’s inevitable that a vaccine-poor country sharing a 9,000 km border with a vaccine-glutted country would yield some arbitrage. Below, how Canadians are slipping over the border to capitalize on some sweet, sweet American COVID shots.
It’s remarkably easy for non-residents to get a COVID shot in the U.S.
“We landed in the USA Friday night, and Saturday morning we were fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” reads a recent blog post by Montreal’s Andrew D’Amour, co-founder of the travel website Flytrippers. In early April, D’Amour booked a vaccination appointment at a Tom Thumb grocery store in Dallas, caught a flight the next day to Texas, and will eventually re-enter Canada by road to avoid mandatory hotel quarantine.
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With virtually all of the U.S.’s most vulnerable demographics now fully vaccinated, most states have opened up vaccination to everyone over the age of 16. Proof of U.S. citizenship is not required to get the shot. However, many state immunization authorities have also made it clear that their shots are intended for their own residents, and not out-of-staters or foreign nationals. “If you do not live or work in Washington, please do not make vaccine appointments,” reads the official webpage of the Washington State Department of Health.
Another thing the Americans have: Online booking for drug store vaccine appointments.Photo by Frederic J. Brown via Getty Images
Enforcing those residency requirements has been another story. U.S. vaccination has increasingly been outsourced to private pharmacies, some of whom, like the drug store giant CVS, have openly declared they would not be checking IDs. As one vaccine patient at a California Walgreens told the San Francisco Chronicle in March, “there’s zero requirement to prove anything.” For Canadians willing to fib about their eligibility on an online form, a COVID-19 jab could be obtained at a cross-border pharmacy simply by making an appointment online.
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In recent weeks, meanwhile, some states have begun dropping even the most basic residency requirements for immunization. Texas, where D’Amour got his shot, does not require any proof of state residency. Since March 29, the vaccine eligibility webpage for the Louisiana Department of Health has just been a large banner reading “everyone in Louisiana ages 16 and older is eligible to get vaccinated against COVID-19.”
Seriously, that’s it.
Not all Americans have been pleased with foreign nationals swooping in to receive vaccines paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. In January, Florida tightened residency restrictions on its COVID shots after it emerged that the state was being targeted by vaccine tourists from Canada, Central America and even South Asia.
D’Amour, for his part, justified his Texas shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine by writing “if they didn’t want non-residents getting vaccinated, they simply wouldn’t allow non-residents to get vaccinated.”
The Americans are surprisingly liberal about letting Canadians over the border
U.S./Canadian land border crossings are closed to non-essential travel. This means that if you drive up to Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge and tell them you’re going to Disneyworld, Homeland Security agents will probably turn you away.
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Which is a shame.Photo by Kent Phillips/Walt Disney World Resort via Getty Images
But the “non-essential” restrictions do not apply to anyone arriving in the U.S. by air, sea or rail. Right now, to fly into the United States for any reason (including hitting up their excellent domestic vaccine regime), all you need is a negative COVID-19 test.
Although Ottawa has discouraged non-essential travel since early 2020, it’s actually been possible for Canadians to fly into the U.S. throughout the entire pandemic. That’s how thousands of Canadian snowbirds were still able to spend the winter of 2020 at their second homes in Florida. When Florida began rolling out vaccines to seniors around Christmastime, these snowbirds would become some of the world’s first Canadians to be fully vaccinated. And even after Florida’s crackdown on vaccine tourism, most of these snowbirds continue to be eligible for shots by virtue of having a fixed Florida address.
However, it’s on the return trip that Canadian vaccine tourists risk getting in trouble at the hands of their own government if they aren’t careful. Just this week, a B.C. dual-citizen was slapped with a $3,450 ticket by federal quarantine authorities after he took a day trip into Washington State to obtain his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
It wasn’t the vaccine that got him the ticket, but the fact that he hadn’t fulfilled the Canadian border requirement of securing a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of his re-entry to Canada.
Many U.S. border towns are now openly giving shots to Canadians
If an elaborate trip into the U.S. just to get the COVID jab seems a bit much, you’re in luck: A growing number of U.S. jurisdictions are now freely handing their extra vaccines to Canadians either out of pity, largesse, or economic expediency.
North Dakota led the charge earlier this month with a program to use excess doses to immunize Manitoba-based truck drivers who cross their shared border. “With adequate vaccine supplies and all North Dakotans having access to vaccine while Canada is dealing with a vaccine shortage, we want to do our part to ensure essential workers from Canada who are frequently travelling through our state are vaccinated,” said North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. This week, North Dakota then expanded the program further to include Saskatchewan truckers and even Manitoba teachers.
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Last week, the Blackfoot Confederacy in Montana administered its surplus vaccines to First Nations over the Canadian border, as well as residents of the town of Cardston, Alta., a largely Mormon settlement of 3,500 people. “The mobile clinic was a great success, very emotional and no one who attended was turned away,” wrote the confederacy in a statement. The shots were administered at the appropriately named Medicine Line, the Blackfoot name for the U.S./Canadian border.
And in Alaska, Governor Mike Dunleavy has just offered to vaccinate the entire B.C. town of Stewart, hoping it would facilitate a quicker reopening of the border Alaska shares with both B.C. and the Yukon. As Dunleavy told the Associated Press, “our neighbors to the east are fantastic. We couldn’t ask for better neighbors than the Canadians. But the virus has really hit them hard and as a result, their mitigating approaches have affected us greatly by slowing down traffic, limiting traffic.”
For thousands of Canadians already jumping the queue on Ottawa’s laggardly vaccine rollout, it has simply been a matter of asking their American neighbours very, very nicely for extra shots.
Have we mentioned how sorry we are about the War of 1812?Photo by White House Historical Association
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European Commissioner for Europe fit for the Digital Age Margrethe Vestager speaks during a news conference on European project in battery value chain at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels.
European Union regulators are accusing Apple of violating the bloc's antitrust laws, alleging that the company distorts competition for music streaming through rules for its App Store.
The EU's executive Commission said Friday it objected to how Apple applies rules in its App Store to music streaming services competing with its own Apple Music service, saying that it ends up costing consumers more and limiting their choices.
One of the main concerns outlined by the EU centres on Apple's practice of forcing app developers selling digital content to use its in-house payment system, which charges a 30% commission on all subscriptions.
The EU's investigation, which followed up on a complaint from the popular music-streaming service Spotify, found that fees end up being passed on to consumers.
A second EU concern is that Apple prevents developers from telling users about cheaper ways to pay for subscriptions that don’t involve going through an app.
Apple rejected the charges, saying it was proud of its role in helping Spotify grow into a music streaming giant. The company also noted that Spotify doesn't pay Apple a commission for most of its subscribers.
“Once again, they want all the benefits of the App Store but don’t think they should have to pay anything for that,” Apple said in a statement. "The Commission’s argument on Spotify’s behalf is the opposite of fair competition.”
The EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said while Spotify had grown despite Apple's rules, smaller music streaming players like Deezer and Soundcloud appeared to be hurt by them.
“Our concern is that Apple distorts competition in the music streaming market to the benefit of its own music streaming service, Apple Music," she told reporters in Brussels.
Vestager noted that Apple Music isn't subject to the same rules, which hurts rivals by raising their costs, reducing their profit margins and making them less attractive on the App Store.
Apple has 12 weeks to respond to the EU's objections. Under EU competition law, companies could offer to make changes — Vestager indicated she thought “Apple should end the infringement" and not do anything that would have the same effect. Or else, companies could be fined up 10% of their annual revenue for breaches, which in Apple's case could run into billions of euros, since the 27-nation bloc is a trading behemoth of 450 million people.
Ensuring that Apple operates fairly is an “urgent task with far-reaching implications," Spotify’s head of global affairs and chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez said in a statement.
The European Commission’s move "is a critical step toward holding Apple accountable for its anticompetitive behaviour, ensuring meaningful choice for all consumers and a level playing field for app developers,” Gutierrez said.
If you're a Nova Scotian between the ages of 40 and 54 hoping to book an appointment for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, keep trying.
That's the advice from the CEO of the Pharmacy Association of Nova Scotia, Allison Bodnar.
"It looks like everything local is full," she told NEWS 95.7 fill-in host Todd Veinotte just after 10 a.m. Friday. "But what I can say is there will be a few more clinics added as the day goes on."
The province announced earlier this week that it would be expanding the eligibility for the AstraZeneca immunization.
The website and phone line (1-833-797-7772) opened up for the age group Friday morning.
According to the province, there are about 195,000 eligible Nova Scotians in the 40-to-54 age group.
"It's great to see so many people are interested in getting the shots, which just means we can get more people vaccinated in a shorter amount of time," Bodnar said.
Those between the ages of 55 and 64 remain eligible for the AstraZeneca vaccine and anyone 55+ is eligible for a Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
"We have a lot of Moderna and Pfizer coming in in the middle of May and later May, and that's going to really start flowing," said Bodnar. "I expect we'll be dropping age groups pretty quickly as we get later into May."
Once you're eligible, or if you already are and haven't yet been able to book, keep checking for appointments.
"Clinics are being added daily. The government has an IT team that's adding these clinics, so as we get the information out to pharmacies about how many doses they're going to receive, they submit some documentation to these IT teams, which then creates the clinic in CANImmunize," Bodnar explained.
"So everyday, there will be more clinics on there throughout the month of May."
Premier Iain Rankin and Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health, have another briefing scheduled at 2 p.m. Friday where they are expected to update the province's vaccine program.
Inside Salisbury Cathedral in Salisbury, England, in January, healthcare workers get ready to inject residents with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Frank Augstein/The Associated Press
Researchers in Britain have found that one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provides insufficient protection against new variants of the COVID-19 virus and they’ve urged public health officials to be vigilant about ensuring that people receive a second injection.
“We’re looking rather vulnerable to variants after one dose,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London who co-authored the research.
Dr. Altmann said their findings were especially relevant to countries like Britain where most people have had only one dose of a vaccine so far. More than 34.2 million people in the United Kingdom have had one shot and 14.5 million have had two.
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“For the situation of countries like the U.K., we’re saying hang on a minute, those people are doing well at the moment, and the U.K. has done well, but watch out and keep your eye on the ball for the variants because [people] are far more vulnerable than you might have expected to the variant strains,” he told a media briefing on Friday.
In a study released Friday, the scientist tracked 731 British healthcare workers for several months last year. About half of those in the study group had contracted COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in March 2020 while the remainder had not been infected.
The study found that those who’d previously had a mild or even asymptomatic infection, had a far higher immune response after one dose of the Pfizer vaccine than those who hadn’t been ill. The immune response was so strong, the study said, that it also offered good protection against variants first detected in Britain and South Africa.
The study “is basically showing that if you’ve had prior COVID-19, and then you’ve had a single dose vaccine, you are really in a different league in terms of your immune response,” said Rosemary Boyton, a professor of immunology and respiratory medicine at Imperial College who co-authored the study. “It’s almost like the infection has acted as a prime and the first dose has acted as a boost.”
However, the group of volunteers who had not been infected showed a much weaker immune response to the variants after one dose. The study showed that their level of neutralizing antibodies was 11- to 25-fold lower against the British B. 1.1.7 variant compared to the original version of the virus, “resulting in the majority of individuals falling below the protective threshold.”
The research team said their findings also likely apply to other variants in circulation, such as the Brazil P.1 and the India B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants.
While the U.K. has seen a dramatic drop in infections, deaths and hospitalizations since January when a variant detected outside London began to spread rapidly, Dr. Atlmann urged caution given that new mutations have surfaced.
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“One dose in terms of all of our measurable immune parameters of [the Pfizer vaccine] really does look very, very feeble and all the more so against variants,” he said. “And yet whatever the level of immunity that it’s induced, it’s certainly been enough to have had some impact. But it’s really very, very weak compared to two doses. My message from that would be hang on in there for your second dose.”
Both researchers stressed that they weren’t suggesting that vaccines won’t work, but that the public should be careful about the level of protection one jab offers.
“All I would say loud and clear is we’re definitely not saying that the vaccines are useless,” said Dr. Altmann. “We’re actually saying the vaccines are incredibly good. But what we are saying for a country for example like the U.K. that has the majority of its vaccinated people on one dose and also has one eye on the horizon for any incoming variants of concern, that’s a potential real vulnerability. And a solution would be to keep up your guard on the surveillance of variants and get the second dose to people.”
Britain reported 2,381 infections on Friday and 15 deaths as the pandemic continued to show signs of easing. By contrast, the daily infection total in January was frequently above 60,000 and more than 1,200 deaths were announced each day.
Figures released Friday from Public Health England also showed that more than half of the U.K.’s population – 34.5 million people – live in parts of the country that have gone two weeks without a single death from the virus.
“We have come a long way since the beginning of the year, when we saw 20 times the level of infection we see now,” said Sarah Crofts, who runs a weekly infection survey at the Office for National Statistics. “The infection rate has continued to decrease across the U.K. and we are back to levels seen near the end of last summer.”
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Canada's economy expanded at a 6.5 per cent pace in the first three months of 2021, as the service sector is showing signs of coming out of the COVID-19 doldrums even as large parts of goods-producing industries are still lagging.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that Canada's gross domestic product expanded by 0.4 per cent in February alone. That came on the heels of a larger 0.7 per cent spike in January. But coupled with preliminary data for March showing 0.9 per cent growth, that puts Canada on track for healthy growth for the quarter as a whole.
"So, even with much more forceful restrictions, a slower vaccine roll-out, and without the help of the two mega U.S. stimulus packages at the start of the year, somehow the Canadian economy matched the U.S. step for step through the winter months," Bank of Montreal economist Doug Porter said of the numbers. "That is impressive."
March's numbers are preliminary, so they may change in an update next month. But February's numbers are now final and they paint a picture of an economy having an uneven convalescence from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fourteen of the 20 industries the data agency tracks posted gains, including sectors hit hard by the first waves of COVID-19, including retail and food and accommodation.
Retail sales jumped 4.5 per cent, following two months of contraction in December and January as lockdowns started up again.
The food and accommodation sector has been walloped by COVID-19 shutdowns, but it expanded by 3.5 per cent. That's the first monthly increase since August 2020.
On the flip side, manufacturing shrank for the second month in a row, this time by 0.9 per cent. And mining, quarrying and oil and gas contracted by 2.8 per cent, while transportation shrank by two per cent.
While it was encouraging to see overall growth picking up after a 2020 that ended up being the worst year on record for Canada's economy, economist Sri Thanabalasingam with TD Bank said the numbers still show how long and slow the recovery from COVID-19 will be, as the virus is still very much affecting Canada's economy.
"February, and even March, seem like a long time ago don't they?" he said in a note to clients after the numbers came out.
While vaccination efforts are ramping up and offer hope that things can get back to normal sometime this summer, "this timeline is uncertain. What's more certain is that the next phase of the recovery will require vaccines to gain the upper hand on the virus. Fingers crossed this happens sooner rather than later."
Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech have submitted a request to the European drug regulator for the approval of their coronavirus vaccine to be extended to include children 12 to 15 years old, in a move that could offer younger and less at-risk populations in Europe access to the shot for the first time.
In a statement Friday, the two pharmaceuticals said their submission to the European Medicines Agency is based on an advanced study in more than 2,000 adolescents that showed their vaccine to be safe and effective. The children will continue to be monitored for longer-term protection and safety for another two years.
On April 9, BioNTech and Pfizer requested that their emergency use authorization with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also be extended to children 12 to 15 years old.
A week later, Health Canada confirmed it had received a "submission from Pfizer-BioNTech to expand the use of its [COVID-19 vaccine] in individuals 12 years of age and older."
Health Canada has received a submission from Pfizer-BioNTech to expand the use of its <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CovidVaccine?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CovidVaccine</a> in individuals 12 years of age and older. The Department is currently reviewing this submission. <a href="https://t.co/rnwFtuHX8r">https://t.co/rnwFtuHX8r</a>
German Health Minister Jens Spahn welcomed the news that the vaccine might soon get the green light for older children.
"This can make a further real difference to our vaccine campaign, if approval is granted," he said on the sidelines of a visit to a vaccine manufacturing plant in the German town of Reinbek.
The COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech was the first one to be given the green light by the EMA last December, when it was licensed for anyone 16 and over across the 27-nation EU bloc.
Ontario is adjusting its COVID-19 vaccine rollout to account for an influx of Pfizer-BioNTech shipments in the coming month. Here’s a week-by-week breakdown of who will have access to the shot, when.
Ontario expects to receive 786,240 doses of the Pfizer vaccine — nearly double the size of the previous week’s shipment.
As of this week, 50 per cent of the vaccine supply will go to COVID-19 hot spots, and the remaining 50 per cent will be split between all public health units.
Across the province, the minimum age to receive the Pfizer and Moderna shots will lower to 50. In hot spots, those 18 and older will be eligible to book appointments for shots at mass vaccination clinics.
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Adults with high-risk health conditions — such as obesity, developmental disabilities and treatments requiring immunosuppression — will also be eligible for shots provincewide.
A group of employees who cannot work from home — which includes food manufacturing workers and foster care workers — also become eligible.
WEEK OF MAY 10
The province anticipates a shipment of 787,410 Pfizer doses, and 388,100 Moderna doses.
Those 18 and over with at-risk health conditions, such as autoimmune disorders, liver disease, and cancer, will be able to make their appointments.
A second group of employees who can’t work from home also become eligible. That includes essential retail workers such grocery store employees, those who work in courts and the justice system, veterinarians and their teams, and transportation workers, among many others.
WEEK OF MAY 17
The province expects to receive 787,410 doses of the Pfizer shot for a second week in a row.
This week, vaccine distribution is set to return to a per capita basis.
The minimum age for vaccine eligibility lowers to 30.
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WEEK OF MAY 24
The province anticipates a shipment of 788,580 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
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Vaccines are allocated based on population.
The minimum age to book a shot lowers to 18 across the province.
MAY 31 THROUGH JUNE 28
Each week, the province expects to receive between 938,340 and 939,510 Pfizer doses.
Ontario government admits long-term care homes needed more attention during pandemic
Ontario government admits long-term care homes needed more attention during pandemic
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