Western provinces to get Janssen doses as Ottawa aims to balance domestic and foreign COVID-19 vaccine demand

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The federal government says 20,000 doses of the Janssen vaccine are set to arrive in Canada this week, and will be sent to western provinces to help boost vaccination rates.

Officials confirmed the shipment of the vaccine from France this week as Canada tries to balance domestic vaccine requests with growing pleas from low-income countries to help them access first doses.

Earlier this week, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that Canada would donate 73 million vaccine doses to COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing organization, to help get shots to parts of the world where even health care workers have yet to receive their first dose. Canada will immediately donate 10 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and give COVAX cash to purchase 63 million more doses by the end of 2022.

Adults older than 70, some health care workers among groups who should get mRNA booster shots: NACI

While Canada has millions of excess doses in storage – 11.3 million as of Oct. 28 – countries around the world are struggling to access a meaningful vaccine supply. In Africa, only six per cent of the population has been vaccinated with two doses. In Canada, 73 per cent of the population has received two doses.

Officials in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan had asked the federal government for thousands of Janssen vaccine doses in recent weeks. The single-dose vaccine has not been used in Canada up to now, despite being approved by federal health regulators. About 300,000 doses of the vaccine were shipped to Canada earlier this year, but were ultimately rejected because of contamination issues at a manufacturing plant in the U.S.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has said that while the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are safe, misinformation circulating online may be causing some to prefer the Janssen shot, which is a traditional viral vector vaccine. Some officials believe that offering the Janssen vaccine could encourage those who have been reluctant to finally roll up their sleeves.

A spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada said in an e-mail that Canada’s Pfizer/BioNTech doses in storage are set to expire on March 21, 2022, while the Moderna vaccine has expiry dates ranging from mid-December to the end of March, 2022.

But it’s becoming clear that demand for vaccine will pick up in the days ahead as more provinces roll out recommendations for booster shots.

Last week, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended that all adults 80 and older be offered a booster dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine at least six months after their second dose. NACI had already recommended that adults living in long-term care receive a booster shot.

Other groups who may be at risk of experiencing waning immunity, severe illness or essential health workers could also be offered a booster shot, NACI said, including adults aged 70 to 79, those who received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine or one dose of the Janssen vaccine, front-line health workers or adults from First Nations or Métis communities.

On Wednesday, Ontario announced it would be expanding booster shots as of this Saturday to include anyone 70 and older who received their second dose at least six months ago, health care workers and essential caregivers in long-term care and other congregate settings, as well as First Nations, Inuit and Métis individuals and non-Indigenous members of their households. The rest of the population will be eligible for a booster sometime in the new year.

Other provinces have already announced plans for booster shots. B.C., for instance, has started rolling out boosters to people 70 and older, long-term care residents and people living in rural and remote Indigenous communities, among others. The province plans a wider rollout of boosters, which will eventually include anyone 12 and older, starting in January.

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