BREAKING: Health Canada approves Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine
- Michael Kras
- 09 Dec 2020
Smoothly following the federal government’s announcement that Canada will be seeing as many as 249,000 initial doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine delivered this month, Health Canada has officially approved the vaccine for use.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that Canada’s first batch of vaccine doses would be arriving sooner than expected and could start to be administered to priority Canadians as soon as mid-December, pending Health Canada approval.
Health Canada has authorized Pfizer-BioNTech’s #COVID19 vaccine. After a thorough and independent review of the evidence. Health Canada has determined that the vaccine meets its stringent safety, efficacy and quality requirements. https://t.co/mhFcspCpTi#COVIDvaccines pic.twitter.com/q6xkC27z6i
— Health Canada and PHAC (@GovCanHealth) December 9, 2020
Thankfully, Health Canada has quickly followed suit and given the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine – which has a groundbreaking 95 per cent efficacy – the green light as of Wednesday morning, meaning that some Canadians can start getting the shot this month.
With as many as 249,000 doses coming in this first batch, a maximum of 124,500 Canadian will be able to get their immunization through the vaccine’s double-dose regimen. Further doses will continue rolling out to Canadians at the top of 2021, with the inoculation program expected to take numerous months to complete.
The initial batch of doses is expected to be reserved for those at highest risk, including the elderly as well as frontline healthcare workers.
Pfizer’s clinical trial featured over 43,000 participants and revealed consistent efficacy across age, sex, and race demographics. What isn’t yet known is how long the vaccine’s intial doses will remain effective, but data will continue to be collected and immunity will be closely monitored.
Read more here.
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