Another vaccine question

[damo]

If we gave the doses when they manufactures say, we would not have many people vaccinated for a long time. We are facing a very real shortage of vaccines.

Sorry but it doesn’t help that countries like the US are not allowing companies to ship vaccines to other countries. Including AstraZeneca which is insane because the US hasn’t even approved it. I get they are sending us 1.5 million, but how many millions more are sitting in storage not going into arms because it’s not approved there.

And they have an expiration date.

 

[wdwmom3]

And they have an expiration date.

Yep. I get wanting to vaccinate your citizens first. But they aren’t using this vaccine. So why keep it from everyone else?

Sorry I need to step away. It just gets me so mad.

 

[Gigi22]

Yep. I get wanting to vaccinate your citizens first. But they aren’t using this vaccine. So why keep it from everyone else?

Sorry I need to step away. It just gets me so mad.

That’s OK, I’m afraid I understand just too well. Sigh.

 

[ronandannette]

The issue was that we in Canada have been unable to secure a consistent, reliable supply of any of the approved vaccines in sufficient quantity to adhere to the manufacturer’s timelines. So, since there is real world evidence to show that vaccines provide a good level of immunity after just one dose, we are stretching the timeline for the second shot to four months. Ideal? Heck no, but if this strategy can give more people immunity faster, then we are going for it. Given our difficulty securing a supply, reserving a second dose for those people we were able to vaccinate first (initially LTC residents and those in healthcare) just didn’t make sense. Particularly in the face of recently growing “vaccine nationalism” among countries that manufacture vaccine, we are very grateful to the US for offering us 1.5 million doses. None of the other manufacturing countries has made an equivalent offer. With only 11-12% of Canadians vaccinated, we still have a long way to go.

Far fewer than that are fully vaccinated. Pfizer and Moderna were contractually obligated to provide us with the rest of the $220 million dollars worth of doses we've already paid for, by the end of the first quarter. The clock is rapidly running down.