The start of “The biggest vaccination campaign in history” of Canada, according to the terms used Monday, December 7 by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will be given on Monday, December 14, with the first doses of anti-Covid vaccine administered throughout the territory.
The latest hurdle, the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech alliance vaccine by the public health body Health Canada, was lifted mid-week, the director of his office of medical sciences, Doctor Marc Berthiaume, having confirmed, on Wednesday December 9, that “ clinical data received show 95% efficacy of the vaccine, for up to two months after inoculation of the required second dose “.
This acceleration of the schedule was a surprise. Faced with almost daily criticism from his parliamentary opposition – “Why are we so late? “, exclaimed at the beginning of December, in the House of Commons, the leader of the Conservatives, Erin O’Toole – Justin Trudeau had been content until then to answer that ” that counted was not the start line, but the finish line », Promising that the majority of Canadians would be immune “By September 2021”.
Complex distribution
Faced with mounting political pressure, the first vaccinations observed in Great Britain and those expected imminently in the neighboring United States, also undoubtedly of the 76 million doses pre-ordered from Pfizer, the Prime Minister managed to anticipate the call , welcoming ” to be able to deploy vaccines faster than expected “. Two hundred and forty-nine thousand first doses are expected by the end of December in Canada. They will be distributed in the thirteen Canadian provinces, in proportion to their population. It is then up to the provincial authorities to ensure their administration, by establishing an order of priority.
From the start of the week, Quebec and Ontario in particular, the two provinces most affected by the epidemic, will begin to vaccinate the elderly living in long-term care centers, those who have paid the heaviest toll on the virus since the start of the pandemic. As the rate of vaccine production and delivery accelerates, health network workers and those deemed to be most vulnerable will follow.
But the conditions required to maintain the stability of Pfizer’s vaccine complicate its distribution throughout Canada, the second largest country in the world. “The need to ensure transport that absolutely respects a temperature of – 70 ° C, and the fact that we cannot separate the batches that arrive at our premises in boxes of 900 doses, make access to this vaccine difficult. It is actually up to the patient to come up with the dose more than the other way around », Explains Nathalie Grandvaux, whose research at the University of Montreal hospital center focuses on host-virus interactions.
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