The Canadian government urged its provinces not to waste thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that expire in a few days. This was explained by the Minister of Health, Patty Hajdu in a letter in which she suggested to provinces that cannot apply the doses to donate items to other districts of the country that can make the applications.
Hajdu offered federal support to help ensure the doses are not wasted. He argued that the Public Health Agency of Canada can help with logistics and coordination if a province or territory concludes that it cannot use all of its doses by the expiration date and wants to transfer them to another part of the country. The topic was the subject of conversation between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the prime ministers of the provinces.
The minister remarked in the letter that there is “A growing concern regarding AstraZeneca vaccine doses due to expire at the end of MayHe added that “I want to offer support to ensure these doses are used before they expire so that we can continue to offer second doses to Canadians and avoid vaccine waste.”
He also stressed that “minimizing waste will allow us to offer second doses of AstraZeneca to fully vaccinate people faster, which in turn will support the safe reopening of our communities and our economy.” In that sense, he recommended to those provinces that cannot use the vaccines before the expiration date “to communicate with other provinces that may be well positioned to administer these doses within their system.”
It is not clear how many doses are at risk of spoiling. Ontario struggles to use about 45,000 AstraZeneca vaccines by the end of May, before they expire in June. Manitoba reported that it has 7,000 doses about to expire.
Most provinces stopped administering the first doses of AstraZeneca in early May due to the risk that those vaccinated would develop a rare but potentially fatal blood clotting condition. The risk of blood clots is much lower after the second dose.
Last Friday, Ontario announced that it would begin giving the second dose of AstraZeneca to those who received the first injection between March 10 and March 19. Since that date, people trying to access those second doses have had a difficult time finding pharmacies that actually have AstraZeneca vaccines to administer.
The case of Canada is paradigmatic worldwide. The country has 37.7 million inhabitants, and in December 2020, when the vaccines began to be commercialized, it signed contracts with seven pharmaceutical companies for 414 million doses. Considering that two doses are required per person, the country purchased six vaccines per inhabitant. The Trudeau administration agreed to supply vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Sanofi, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, and Medicago-GlaxoSmithKline.
The Argentine ambassador in Mexico, Carlos Tomada, was critical of the attitude of hoarding of vaccines that Canada had. “The vaccine has to be declared a universal good”Said on Channel 9. “Receive in a dropper, because suffering, we all suffer,” added the former Minister of Labor.
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