Health Canada expects the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved next month

OTTAWA – The first COVID-19 vaccine could be approved for use in Canada within two weeks, Health Canada’s chief medical consultant said Thursday.

The department’s drug review team is currently reviewing three COVID-19 vaccines: one from Pfizer and BioNtech, a second from Moderna, and a third from AstraZeneca.

Supriya Sharma told reporters in a briefing in Ottawa that the Pfizer review is the most advanced of the three and that Health Canada is working alongside similar review teams in the United States and Europe.

“We are basically looking at the same data packets. We have very similar authorization paths available for public health emergencies, ”he said.

“The way the reviews are proceeding is that we expect to make a final decision on vaccines around the same time as the (US Food and Drug Administration) and the European Medicines Agency.”

The FDA will meet on December 10 to decide on the approval of the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer is expected to ship more than six million doses as soon as this happens.

Sharma was less definitive about when Canadians will start getting vaccinated. He said it’s possible the first doses will arrive before the end of December, but it seems more realistic for them to start shipping here in January.

Canada has a purchase agreement to purchase at least 20 million doses from Pfizer and the option to purchase another 56 million. The first four million should arrive between January and March.

A Pfizer spokesperson told Canadian Press Thursday that there is no precise date yet for shipments to Canada, adding that the timing will depend on when it is approved.

“We are urgently working in partnership with stakeholders, including Health Canada and public health decision makers, to bring our vaccine candidate to Canada in a timely manner,” Christina Antoniou said.

Pfizer reported preliminary results from its clinical trials earlier this month, claiming their genetics-based vaccine is 94.5 percent effective.

Sharma said Health Canada typically assigns seven to 12 people to review a new vaccine for approval, and that those people will go through hundreds of thousands of pages of data. This is typically a process that takes more than 2,000 hours.

Sharma said they are dedicating even more people to the COVID-19 trial, but said safety is a top priority when it comes to deciding whether the vaccine can be used in Canada.

“We will only authorize a vaccine if its benefits outweigh the risks,” Sharma said.

Pfizer is just one of seven vaccines Canada has a purchase agreement to obtain. None of the vaccines have yet completed clinical trials, and Health Canada is still expected to approve all of them once they do.

Opposition MPs are getting tired of the lack of specific information federal liberals are providing on the vaccine plan. On Thursday evening, during a committee hearing in the House of Commons, they disseminated Health Minister Patty Hajdu with questions about it, including about Canada’s vaccine production capacity, details of negotiations to get the Can-Sino vaccine from China which fell apart in the summer, and when Health Canada first learned that Pfizer vaccine needed special freezers to keep it at temperatures below -70 ° C.

Hajdu dodged questions with talking points that referred to his pleasure at how many doses of vaccine Canadians will receive and how there was a “global government approach.”

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said sarcastically that he was certain Canadians would be thrilled to find that they will receive the most doses in two years.

NDP health critic Don Davies was equally exasperated when he had no response to provinces being asked to have their vaccine delivery plans ready, or why Australia has a fully defined vaccine launch plan and Canada no.

“Maybe if the minister has no intention of answering the questions, he can do it succinctly,” he suggested.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on November 26, 2020.