TORONTO (AP) – The health minister of Canada’s most populous province said on Tuesday that Ontario’s elderly will not receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as there is limited data on its effectiveness in older populations.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said that Ontario plans to follow the advice of a national panel that is recommended against the use of the newly approved vaccine in people aged 65 and over.
She said that anyone over that age should receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Canada’s regulator approved Oxford-AstraZeneca last week for all adults, including the elderly, but the National Immunization Advisory Committee said this week that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are preferred for the elderly due to “suggested superior efficacy” .
Health authorities in France and Germany and other countries have also raised concerns that AstraZeneca has not tested the vaccine on a sufficient number of elderly people to prove that it works for them and indicated that they would not recommend it to people over 65 .
Belgium authorized only for people aged 55 and under.
France said this week that it will allow some people over 65 to receive the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, after initially restricting its use to younger populations due to limited data on the drug’s effectiveness.
Last month, South Africa reduced its planned implementation of the AstraZeneca vaccine, opting to use an unlicensed injection from Johnson & Johnson for its healthcare professionals.
Meanwhile, the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the Pacific coast, plans to postpone the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for four months.
Ontario and Alberta are also considering following the province’s example.
Dr Bonnie Henry, British Columbia provincial health officer, said the decision was “made in the context of limited supply and based on solid local and international data.
“It makes sense for us, knowing that it is a critical moment now with the limited amount of vaccines that we have in the coming weeks, so that we can provide this protection … to everyone here,” said Henry.
Scientific adviser Mona Nemer told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the British Columbia plan amounts to a “population-level experiment” and that the data provided so far by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are based on an interval of three to four weeks between doses.
Henry said manufacturers have structured their clinical trials in this way to get vaccines to market as quickly as possible, but research in BC, Quebec, Israel and the United Kingdom has shown that the first doses are highly effective.
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