Latest AstraZeneca twist having little effect here

Federal recommendation for Canadians under 55; doses targeted to 60-plus

The Canadian rollout of AstraZeneca hit a snag earlier this week when the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommended the vaccine not be administered to anyone under the age of 55, citing reports in Europe of possibly related rare but serious blood clots that need further investigation.

But the recommendation has no real effect on the rollout of the brand in Ontario, as it is currently only being administered to patients over the age of 60.

“In Ontario, we’ve only been giving it to the 60-plus crowd in pharmacies and in several public health units through primary care. So it changes nothing in Ontario for the current rollout,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist and a member of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force.

“Where it can cause problems, there will be a point in time, hopefully on the sooner end of the spectrum, when we’ll have vaccinated everyone over the age of 60. The question is, now what do you do with your AstraZeneca? Hopefully when that time comes, we’ll have much more clarity over the true risk of this blood clotting issue and we’ll know whether or not we can give it to people under the age of 55.”

While no cases of blood clotting related to the vaccine have been reported in Canada, several provinces have suspended the use of the vaccine for people under 55, including Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador and PEI.

“Based on what we know today, (blood clotting) still appears to be a very, very rare outcome. It’s predominantly in women and it’s predominantly in people under the age of 50,” Bogoch added, noting he believes NACI made a reasonable judgment based on the emerging data.

“At the end of the day, we have to balance: what is the potential risk of blood clotting versus what is the potential risk of COVID-19 infection and what is the potential significant benefit of the vaccine? That’s going to be different for different age groups and I think they took the right balance.”

Health Canada says the country has received some 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca, and Canada is expected to receive a further 1.5 million doses of that vaccine this week. Compared with the other brands, however, AstraZeneca’s role in the Canadian vaccination effort is small. The vast majority of vaccines administered in Canada to date are the Pfizer-BioNTech brand, followed by Moderna. Another vaccine recently approved by Health Canada, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, requires one dose and is expected to arrive in the country at the end of April.

According to the most recent data from Health Canada — which is 10 days old because of reporting lags — there have been 2.5 million doses of Pfizer, 633,000 doses of Moderna, and 309,462 doses of AstraZeneca administered to patients across the country.

Ministry of health spokesperson Adriana Dutkiewicz said that as of Monday, 96 per cent of Ontario’s AstraZeneca vaccines had been used up “and delivery timing for additional shipments is not known at this time.”