Health Canada approves Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Canada (AA) – Health Canada announced Wednesday that it has approved the use of the Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.

Canada is the second country in the world to OK the vaccine. Doses are already being given to residents of the United Kingdom.

About 249,000 doses of the two-dose vaccine is expected to arrive by Dec. 31 and the first inoculations will be to residents and staff in long-term nursing homes.

Of Canada’s deaths from the virus, about 77% were in nursing and seniors’ homes as of mid-November. The death rate for Canada as of Dec. 9 is 12,932, with about 435,000 cases.

The approval came after two months of review of the Pfizer clinical trials.

“The date provided supports favourably the efficacy of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as well as its safety,” said Health Canada. “The efficacy of the vaccine was established to be approximately 95 percent.

“The vaccine was well tolerated by participants and has no important safety concerns.

“The benefit-to-risk assessment for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is considered favourable.”

The Canadian military led by Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin has conducted a series of delivery trials with the 10 provinces and three territories.

Getting the vaccines to Canadians is a logistic nightmare, since it is the world’s second largest country and has many remote areas sparsely populated by predominately Indigenous peoples. And the vaccine must be stored in temperatures below -70°C.

The vaccine is expected to arrive as early as next week from Puurs, a small town in Belgium that has geared up to produce hundreds of millions of the doses targeted for delivery to Canada, as well as the European Union, Japan and more for the United Kingdom.

Each province will be allotted doses based on population. Canada’s population is about 38 million.

The 249,000-dose shipment will be enough to inoculate 124,500 people since two doses must be administered 21 days apart.