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Pfizer-BioNTech is pushing Health Canada to amend its COVID-19 vaccine label and formally recognize that each vial contains six doses rather than five, which would allow the company to send fewer vials to Canada but could complicate the vaccination program.
A company spokesperson said that Pfizer submitted a request to Health Canada on Friday to amend the vaccine label. Pfizer’s contract with Canada is based on delivering doses, rather than a set number of vials.
“Obtaining six doses from the current multidose vial … can help minimize vaccine wastage and enable the most efficient use of the vaccine,” said Christina Antoniou, the director of corporate affairs for Pfizer Canada.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
The Canadian Armed Forces is grappling with a surge in the number of troops who have been infected with COVID-19 over the past month, even as a growing number of service members have started receiving vaccinations from the illness.
Police in Newfoundland and Labrador said they arrested a man with a “large quantity” of knives in a parking lot outside an election candidate’s office Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Liberal Leader and incumbent Premier Andrew Furey said his campaign has been advised he was likely the intended target.
Newly released figures point to a drop in police-recorded crime during the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A lawyer for Hassan Diab says a French appeal court’s order that the Ottawa sociology professor stand trial for a synagogue bombing flies in the face of the evidence. French authorities suspected he was involved in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that killed four people and injured dozens of others. Mr. Diab has always denied the accusation.
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on why institutional naiveté has been guiding Canada’s COVID-19 response: “The same unyielding faith in goodness that brought us lackadaisical border and travel controls, implicit trust in WHO instructions and a vaccine partnership with a company in China is now asking us to believe that countries will prioritize contracts over their own citizens’ well-being. The federal government has largely relied on “asking nicely” throughout this pandemic. How has that been working so far?”
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on why it matters who Canada’s governor-general is: “In such a crisis, we will need a governor-general who is more than a mere symbol or celebrity. We will need someone with the judgment to make the right call, the courage to stick to it under fire, and the qualities of character – dignity, gravitas, integrity – required to rally the public to his or her side. We will need someone capable of protecting the constitutional order from political vandals and opportunists.”
Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on why Jason Kenney’s bet on Keystone was a taxpayer-funded trip to the casino: “Mr. Kenney suffers from “smartest guy in the room” syndrome. He thinks because he can talk fast, and string words together fairly articulately, he’s best suited to determine what’s in Alberta’s best interests. And yet, most of the decisions he’s made since becoming Premier in 2019 have been dreadful, not the least of which was his decision to invest in Keystone.”
Tasha Kheiriddin (The National Post) on why the pandemic is already changing the future of Canadian politics: “One thing is certain: After this pandemic year, politics, like all our lives, will not be the same. We can only hope that these new challenges will spur positive change in the elections ahead.”
John Robson (The National Post) on a year of COVID cluelessness from our esteemed health “experts”: “When a novel coronavirus erupts in the most populated nation on our very connected planet, anyone with half a brain knows the risk of an outbreak in Canada is not low. Or high. It’s 1. On a scale of 0 to 1. As in it will happen. If you heard tomorrow of a new flu strain in China, how would you rank the probability of it turning up here? Or a year ago? So why didn’t they?”
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Kristy Kirkup