COVID-19 vaccine news: is Canada monopolizing doses? A vaccine made in Canada speeds up testing. And a CEO cashes. Here’s what you need to know this week

Considered one of the few ways to finally keep the pandemic under control, the search for a COVID-19 the vaccine is moving fast.

Teams around the world are working on dozens of potential vaccines in the hope that one of them – and perhaps more – will crack the code in the coming months; pass clinical trials and gain regulatory approval.

Thousands of people are already rolling up their sleeves for clinical trials, while debates are underway over issues like who should get a vaccine first. How will it be distributed? How do we make sure that parts of the world are not excluded?

From the spotlight, Pfizer’s promising results highlighted the looming distribution problem, to the local candidate trying to start testing volunteers coast-to-coast, and the question of how many doses are too much for Canadians – here are the big stories last week.

Pfizer’s results put the spotlight on the challenges of distribution

The week began with a splash of important news about vaccines as Pfizer Inc. revealed on Monday morning a first look at its test data, numbers that suggest its candidate, co-developed with German company BioNTech, could be effective until to 90%.

There are caveats: the data has not yet been published and the process is not even complete. That said, as Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alberta put it: “There have been good early signs from many other vaccine studies, but this is a larger dataset with more results. people.

“It made me go from theoretical optimism to just optimism.”

The news, while encouraging, has put the spotlight on one of the fast approaching obstacles on the road to a vaccine: distributing it to Canadians.

Transporting a vaccine that is likely to be needed to every corner of the country will always have been a problem, but the Pfizer vaccine, if approved, presents a number of additional challenges. It uses what’s called RNA, which are basically tiny recipes that push your body to make its own spike proteins, which, in theory, teach your immune system to fight off future coronavirus infections.

It is a new technology and one expert considers very promising, but it also has a serious drawback: it must be stored at temperatures down to -80 C.

So-called cold chain requirements mean that any final distribution plan will require trucks and refrigerated warehouses that some say we don’t yet have. A government tender is currently looking for a company that can transport them packed in dry ice.

One of the other frontline candidates, one made by an American company called Moderna, also uses RNA, and his test results are expected in the coming weeks.

While we have yet to see if either of them will receive Health Canada approval, refrigeration is set to pose a major problem for distribution in the future.

Pfizer CEO sells stock after news

The other news that emerged from Monday’s announcement was the revelation that the company’s CEO took in $ 5.6 million worth of shares on the same day.

While the news raised doubts about who could benefit from developing new vaccines, CEO Albert Bourla said the sale was part of a “personal financial planning” strategy he had authorized months earlier, according to Business Insider.

Vaccine produced in Canada to expand testing across the country

While Pfizer made the biggest headlines this week, the only vaccine produced in Canada currently in clinical trials has hit a major milestone.

Quebec-based Medicago released some results from the first phase of testing this week – which found that its candidate was capable of producing an immune response without serious side effects – and announced plans to move forward with one. Combined Phase 2 and 3 study starting next week, which will seek to enroll volunteers at a few sites across the country.

In a vaccine race currently dominated by front-runners from the US, Europe and Asia, Medicago is the furthest candidate in the house. In addition to some specialized studies on people with specific medical conditions, Medicago is currently conducting the only general study on the COVID-19 vaccine in the country.

Last month, the federal government gave the company $ 173 million to supply up to 76 million doses of its vaccine – if successful – and to build a manufacturing plant in Quebec City.

The expanded study, which has already been approved by Health Canada, will see Medicago’s experimental plant-based vaccine tested on Canadian volunteers. The existing study is underway in Quebec, but the company plans to add sites near Toronto, in the Maritimes and on the west coast.

According to Nathalie Landry, Medicago’s executive vice president of scientific and medical affairs, it’s important to have a Canadian-made vaccine under development.

“This is still the best way countries have found to make sure the vaccine will be available to their population, is to have production capacity in their country,” he said.

The Medicago candidate is also taking a unique approach: the company is using a cousin of a tobacco plant to grow what are called “virus-like particles”, which fool your body into believing it is the coronavirus and thus harvest a immune response.

“It will assemble itself in such a way that it looks like a virus under the electron microscope. It’s similar enough, but it’s not the virus, it’s not infectious, it can’t replicate or induce any disease, “Landry said.

Is Canada taking too much from the potential global vaccine supply?

As the race for a COVID-19 vaccine draws closer and closer, pocket countries around the world have blocked doses for their citizens, a move dubbed “vaccine nationalism” and criticized by many in the global community.

New numbers from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center suggest that, when adjusted to the population, the country currently topping the biggest stack is Canada.

The Center’s Launch and Scale Speedometer, which collects data on health interventions around the world, released new numbers this week saying high-income countries currently have a total of 3.4 billion reserved doses.

Assuming all major vaccine candidates are approved, which is a stretch, Canada, with 358 million doses blocked, has enough to vaccinate the entire population five times over. (Canada has about 37.6 million people, and if everyone needed two shots, it would take just over 75 million doses to harm the entire country.)

That’s more coverage per person than any other country in the world.

It’s also nearly three-quarters of the 500 million doses currently blocked by COVAX, the global vaccine sharing scheme in which Canada has invested millions of dollars in funding.

Canadian officials have argued that it is their job to make sure Canadians have access to the doses. That said, they also said they are committed to COVAX and ensure that, when the time comes, poorer countries are not excluded.

Karina Gould, Canada’s minister for international development, told the Star in September that vaccine companies had already assigned certain doses to COVAX, so it’s not a question that Canada’s orders are at the forefront.

“Canada’s position is that we expect vaccines to be affordable, accessible and fair around the world,” he said.

Will a possible vaccine work for the elderly?

There is no doubt that older adults have borne the brunt of the pandemic, with the majority of deaths occurring among those over 65.

Yet most new drugs and vaccines are being developed in healthy young adults, prompting experts to warn that Health Canada needs to ensure these new candidates are effective for everyone, including older people, who are likely to need them most.

Vaccine manufacturers say they are up to the challenge.

Dr. Wilbur Chen, chief of the adult clinical section at the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, says you should think of these new studies as accordions – instead of going step by step, the manufacturers are in. able to do a lot of tests at the same time, even on older adults.

“We can’t just expect perfect results in perfect studies because it would take a lot longer,” he told the Star.

“But what is positive about the studies we are conducting is that we are trying, in the best possible way, to involve all parts of the population, which means that we have integrated racial and ethnic diversity, having integrated age diversity, we are looking for to do everything even in different geographical areas “.