CANADA OKS J&J VACCINE

Fourth shot in arsenal requires only one dose

OTTAWA • Canada's COVID fight got help on several fronts Friday with regulators approving a new vaccine and millions of doses now scheduled for earlier delivery, but the government isn't yet changing its September target to have everyone vaccinated.

Health Canada approved Johnson & Johnson's vaccine candidate Friday morning following the move of the U.S. FDA last week. Canada is set to receive 10 million doses of the one-shot vaccine, made by the company's subsidiary, Janssenn, before September, but the government can't yet confirm a more specific delivery timeline.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced a stepped up delivery timeline for the first vaccine Canada approved, Pfizer, which is boosting its timetable and will now deliver 1.5 million more doses in March, with an additional million more doses in both April and May. Canada was already expecting nearly 2.5 million doses from Pfizer this month.

The added doses, plus shipments from Moderna and the newly approved Astrazeneca vaccine means Canada expects eight million doses to arrive by the end of this month and cumulatively over 30 million doses will have arrived by the end of June.

Trudeau said his government was committed to delivering as many doses as quickly as possible.

“We'll be there with what people need to get through the pandemic. That means we're sending more and more vaccines to the provinces and territories in the coming weeks and months,” he said.

“Millions of doses are on the way. Deliveries have been ramping up, and they'll ramp up even more in April,” he said.

Canada has ordered 10 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson shot. The company has committed to starting shipments in the second quarter and finishing them before the end of September, but has so far not been more specific.

Trudeau said he spoke with the head of the company's Canadian operation who assured him there will be more details in a few weeks. “He told me that they're committed to getting the full order of doses to Canada and they're working on setting up global supply chains as quickly as possible.”

Despite all the new doses, Trudeau said he is not willing to move up his target to have all Canadians vaccinated by September. If the current delivery schedules come through, Canada will have enough vaccines to inoculate the country's population more than twice over by then, but he said the early rollout has shown that too much can go wrong.

“We have reasons to be optimistic we're going to be able to move things forward, but at the same time we also know that these are global supply chains are being set up and there's always the possibility for disruptions,” he said.

One of those potential disruptions reared its head on Thursday when Italy moved to block a vaccine shipment from Europe to Australia.

Europe imposed export rules last month, requiring companies to provide information about vaccine exports, but at the time said they would not block shipments. Canada received repeated assurances that Canada's shipments would not be blocked. Trudeau said they were paying close attention to the situation, but he was confident that Canada would not face similar moves.

“The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has confirmed to me that the flow of vaccines to Canada should not be interrupted, particularly given the fact that the vaccines we received from Europe at this time are Moderna and Pfizer,” he said.

Canada's Astrazeneca shipments are coming initially from India, before transitioning to shipments from the U.S. and South Korea.

Johnson & Johnson's candidate was approximately 66 per cent in preventing people from catching COVID-19. That is close to the results Astrazeneca received, but lower than the stellar results from Pfizer and Moderna.

Health Canada's chief medical adviser, Dr. Supriya Sharma, said focusing on efficacy misses the bigger picture; that the vaccines are 100% effective in preventing severe illness and death.

“Not one person was vaccinated as part of the various trials died of COVID-19, and all vaccines are effective against severe cases,” she said. “The most efficacious vaccine in the world will only work if somebody agrees to take it, and that agreement, that consent, is based on an understanding of what the benefits are.”