Canada Seeks To Distribute AstraZeneca Vaccines Against …

Canadian government urged provinces not to waste thousands of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine that expire in days. This was explained by the Minister of Health, Patty Hajdu in a letter in which she suggested to provinces which cannot apply the doses to donate items to other districts of the country which can request them.

Hajdu offered federal support to ensure doses are not wasted. He argued that the Public Health Agency of Canada can help with logistics and coordination if a province or territory concludes that it cannot use all of its doses by the expiration date and wishes to transfer them to. another part of the country. The subject was the subject of a conversation between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers of the provinces.

The Minister noted in the letter that there is “Growing concern over AstraZeneca vaccine doses expiring at the end of MayHe added that “I want to offer support to make sure these doses are used before they expire so that we can continue to provide second doses to Canadians and avoid vaccine wastage.”

He also stressed that “minimizing waste will allow us to deliver second doses of AstraZeneca to fully immunize people faster, which in turn will support the safe reopening of our communities and our economy.” In this sense, he recommended to provinces which cannot use the vaccines before the expiration date “to contact other provinces which might be well placed to administer these doses in their system”.

It is not known how many doses are likely to go bad. Ontario struggles to use about 45,000 AstraZeneca vaccines by the end of May, before they expire in June. Manitoba has reported that it has 7,000 doses about to expire.

Most provinces stopped giving the first doses of AstraZeneca in early May because of the risk that those vaccinated would develop a rare but potentially fatal blood clotting disease. The risk of blood clots is much lower after the second dose.

Ontario announced last Friday that it will begin administering the second dose of AstraZeneca to those who received the first injection between March 10 and March 19. Since then, people trying to access these second doses have struggled to find pharmacies that actually have AstraZeneca vaccines to administer.

The case of Canada is paradigmatic the world over. The country has 37.7 million people and in December 2020, when vaccines began to hit the market, it signed contracts with seven pharmaceutical companies for 414 million doses. Considering that two doses per person are needed, the country bought six vaccines per capita. The Trudeau government has accepted the supply of vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Sanofi, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson and Medicago-GlaxoSmithKline.

Argentina’s ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Tomada, criticized Canada’s vaccine storage attitude. “The vaccine must be declared universal good,” he said on channel 9. “Receive in dropper, because suffering, we all suffer,” added the former Minister of Labor.