dr. shelley deeks, co-chair of canada’s national advisory council on immunization (naci), a volunteer advisory group that makes recommendations on vaccine use, put the issue differently when she addressed it, saying canadians who could wait for an mrna vaccine should wait.
“what we’re saying and what we’ve said all along is that mrna vaccines are the preferred vaccine,” she said.
naci and other health officials have since stressed that people who got astrazeneca made the right decision to keep themselves safe, but provinces have still stopped using the vaccine for first doses.
dr. zain chagla, an infectious disease expert and associate professor at mcmaster university, said part of the reason for the difference is risk tolerance, but the u.k. was also in a much different place when it started using astrazeneca.
‘the u.k. did not have a great supply of the pfizer vaccine and so, given the decision to vaccinate your population versus a very prolonged vaccine rollout with a pretty significant wave that they had in january, 2020 they pushed forward with astrazeneca.”
britain was seeing nearly 60,000 cases a day in early january and even with a recent rise there, it is now seeing under 3,000 with hospital occupancy at its lowest level since september. canada’s worst peaks in early january and again in may were around 8,000 cases.