The large batches of Pfizer vaccines that landed in Canada this week from a factory in Belgium could represent a turning point in the implementation of vaccination in the country, even with winter storms delaying the arrival of shipments.
When Pfizer and Moderna reduced their vaccine shipments to Canada because of manufacturing problems – and then Pfizer briefly stopped shipments – the companies unleashed a national wave of setback and a torrent of heated political rhetoric. Despite this, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the government will still reach the target of six million doses, enough for three million people, by the end of March.
[Read: Delays Turn Canada’s Vaccination Optimism Into Anxiety]
Anger, anxiety and general discontent with the pace of vaccine implementation are not limited to Canada. My colleagues in Europe reported similar feelings there.
[Read: France Stalls Between Stubbornly High Infection Rates and Slow Vaccine Rollout]
[Read: Vaccine Shortages Hit E.U. in a Setback for Its Immunization Race]
For my article on Canada, published on Thursday, I talked to people in a variety of fields, including vaccine development, epidemiology, infection control and medical supply chains. They all said they understood the Canadians’ frustration. But none of them were the least bit surprised that the first wave of vaccine deliveries did not go as planned. That, they said, is the nature of the new vaccines.
They also cited two factors in the slow start: the lack of an established vaccine manufacturer based in Canada and the country’s modest vaccine manufacturing capacity. But they said there was little the government could have done to get these factories up and running now.
Until last summer, Trudeau and other members of his cabinet repeatedly suggested that they were working to get vaccines out of Canadian factories by the end of 2020. But in testimony this week on the parliamentary committee, Mark Lievonen, the vice president of the federal vaccine task, said there was never a Canadian manufacturing option that could speed up deliveries. And in previous testimony, Anita Anand, the minister whose department did business with the vaccines, said the government was unable last year to persuade any of the leading vaccine manufacturers to settle in Canada.
There will be nationally manufactured vaccines, but that won’t happen until well after September, the government’s goal of vaccinating all Canadians. The federally funded factories in Montreal and Saskatoon hope to be operational by the end of the year, which is also the projected delivery date for what would be Canada’s first home-grown vaccine. Its developer, Providence Therapeutics, a biotechnology start-up based in Calgary, is in the early stages of testing the vaccine and has signed an agreement to produce these year-end batches for Manitoba, assuming regulatory authorization.
Canada may also need less vaccine than previously thought. Four studies now suggest that people already infected with coronavirus need only a single injection of the Pfizer and Moderna two-dose vaccines for immunity.
What remains to be seen now is whether Pfizer and Moderna are able to continue increasing production and how many of the five other Canadian companies have placed orders to place their vaccines on the market.
After reading Dan Bilefsky’s Canada Letter last week about travel restrictions between Canada and the United States, some of you wrote and asked why people who have been vaccinated cannot cross the border into Canada again or be exempt from Canada’s quarantine measures.
While the rules now allow relatives, including people in loving relationships and grandparents, to enter Canada for visits, many of you have pointed out that the two-week quarantine makes visits impractically long for many people. And for months, I have heard from Americans who own vacation properties in Canada that they are now unable to visit.
There are several reasons. But an important answer is connected to the constant recommendations of public health officials in Canada and the United States to avoid any kind of travel. The first data from Israel show that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is indeed highly effective in protecting the people who receive it. But there is a blind spot in the research: it remains to be seen whether people who have been vaccinated can be contagious.
[Read: Help! I’m Vaccinated, but What Do I Need to Know to Protect Others?]
In addition, there is the question of proof of vaccination. Although Denmark has proposed a digital vaccination passport and the International Air Transport Association has a digital vaccine travel pass, there is no broad international agreement on how to deal with this problem.
The false documentation is already an issue with the results of the Covid-19 test that passengers must show before boarding flights. On Thursday, Transport Canada said it fined one person $ 10,000 and another $ 7,000 for boarding a flight from Mexico to Canada last month after they tested positive. The couple, who was not identified, had a false test result, indicating that they were free of infection.
Trans Canada
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Brian Boucher writes that an exhibition by artist Winnipeg Divya Mehra in Los Angeles “includes only one work, but it is incredible: almost 20-foot inflatable versions of the wave and urn emojis, expressive of a ‘tsunami of sadness’; when the exhibition opened in mid-January, two million died of coronavirus ”.
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Radical changes in Canada’s gun laws will support the municipal ban on firearms with federal penalties, including prison terms. This will also make it easier to withdraw weapons licenses.
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A family in the suburbs of Montreal is part of the “clandestine hockey” movement.
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Two tech giants have taken action this week that may be a preview of what’s to come when Canada introduces laws to regulate digital giants, probably later this year. Google has agreed to make payments to news organizations in Australia, while Facebook is limiting the sharing of news articles by users in Australia.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has been reporting on Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
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