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Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer of Canada, told a news conference Thursday that the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has determined that the time between two doses of Pfizer vaccines -BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 could be extended, up to 42 days.
“There is currently a limited supply of these vaccines in Canada,” said Dr. Njoo. “While NACI continues to recommend that a full suite of vaccines be offered according to authorized schedules, NACI recognizes that provincial and territorial governments will need to determine how best to manage supply in their respective jurisdictions.
“NACI’s analysis indicates that in exceptional circumstances, jurisdictions may consider an extended interval between doses, depending on the current and expected epidemiological status, the capacity of the health system and the logistics of delivery and vaccine management, preferably within 42 days.
Dr Njoo added that the effectiveness of the vaccine should be the same for up to 42 days, but there is no data on the effectiveness of the vaccines after this point. According to Health Canada authorization, the second Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should be administered at 21 days and the second dose of Moderna vaccine should be administered at 28 days.
“If the provincial or territorial vaccination programs decided to … go beyond 42 days, I think it would be very important … to collect data, to actually monitor populations to see what the overall effectiveness of the vaccine is,” in the vaccinated population, ”said Dr Njoo.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, vice president of logistics and operations at the Public Health Agency of Canada and head of vaccine distribution efforts in Canada, said more than 380,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine will be delivered to provinces and to the territories this week.
A total of 208,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will arrive in Canada and 171,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
Canada expects to receive the same amount of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine each week during the remainder of January. During the first week of February, 230,400 doses of the Moderna vaccine are expected to arrive.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin said that as Canada enters the second phase of the vaccine distribution plan, also known as the “phase ramp”, an average of over one million doses per week is expected to start arriving. in April.
He said Canada has “a vaccine shortage in the first quarter” but still expects the country to receive six million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
Check out our COVID-19 in Canada topic page for the latest news, tips, health updates, cases and more.
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