Quebec will ship Astrazeneca doses to regions if demand in Montreal low

Montreal's public health authorities are appealing to Montrealers 55 and older to get to their nearest vaccination centre this weekend for a shot of Astrazeneca while they still can.

Demand for the vaccine was weak last weekend, and since Saturday only about 1,300 shots of Astrazeneca were administered per day across the region. Health authorities have already sent 14,000 Astrazeneca doses that had been intended for Montreal to other regions of the province experiencing high COVID-19 case counts, and more will be transferred if demand in Montreal does not pick up.

On Friday, public health authorities issued an appeal to those aged 55 and over, stressing there are currently 20,000 doses of Astrazeneca available at about 30 walk-in clinics across the island for that age group. In order to reach the goal of vaccinating 75 per cent of those over 55, some 47,454 people still need to be vaccinated in Montreal.

Across the province, more than 635,000 people aged 55 to 79 have not yet been vaccinated nor made an appointment, said Noémie Vanheuverzwijn, a spokesperson for the Quebec's health department. She said about 160,000 people in that age group in the Montreal region still have not been vaccinated nor made their appointments.

“It should be noted that the doses that had initially been attributed to Montreal will be redistributed to the regions where the interest for the Astrazeneca vaccine is stronger,” she said. “Analyses are currently underway to determine the number of doses that will be involved in this operation.”

Public health authorities stressed that the risk of developing a blood clot with Astrazeneca is infinitesimally small, while the danger of becoming ill or dying from COVID -19 complications is vastly greater.

It makes no sense to wait several weeks or months to be offered a different vaccine, said Dr. Paul Le Guerrier, medical adviser with Montreal Public Health's infection and community intervention service.

“For someone who is 55 or older, there is 8,000 times higher risk of dying from COVID than from taking the Astrazeneca vaccine,” he said. “Right now, we are in a race against the variants. We see the ravages the variants can do, and they are gaining ground in Montreal. They are more transmissible and they put more people into hospital and intensive care. A good way to avoid that risk is to get the Astrazeneca vaccine.

“This is a vaccine that after one month, or 35 days, offers a protection of 73 per cent against illness. It is a vaccine that is possibly even better than Pfizer and Moderna against serious complications from COVID-19 illness, by which I mean hospitalization and death. Overall, it's a good vaccine.”

Some are concerned that the government has not made enough of an effort to persuade Montrealers that the Astrazeneca vaccine is safe, nor to encourage them to get vaccinated, period.

Roxane Borgès Da Silva, a health economics professor at the Université de Montréal, said she is impressed by the way the public health community has rallied to create impressive facilities and deal with logistics, but feels the communications piece has been missing. And she said the government has been too slow to react to lulls in demand at vaccination centres.

She said people need deadlines to be set so that they know their age group or classification will be a priority for vaccination but only for a set time.

“I don't know why the government didn't do that,” she said. “It would reinforce the scarcity of the vaccine . ... It would put some pressure on by giving the (current priority group) a deadline and would give the rest information about when vaccination will be opened up to the next priority group.”

She is very concerned about the decision to move some of Montreal's doses to the regions, because even if Montreal seems to be on a slower growth curve than some other parts of Quebec, that could change very quickly.

“The density of the population in Montreal is so much higher than the regions and we have seen in the past that Montreal was the epicentre for the pandemic for each wave. It is not clear why the third wave is not here yet, but maybe tomorrow or the next day there will be a big increase in the Montreal region.”