The latest on the coronavirus outbreak for February 24th.
- Ontario hospitalization numbers falling as capacity limits are loosened.
- ‘The bane of our existence’: Travel industry employees welcome change on PCR test rules.
- World roundup: Hong Kong hospitals stretched, Japan suffering near pandemic-record death toll.
- Explore: Federal government ends use of Emergencies Act utilized to tamp down COVID-related protests…. Manitoba health-care workers will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination…. New Brunswick set to lay out next steps for dealing with COVID-19…. Anthony Fauci pays tribute on CBC’s As It Happens to Dr. Paul Farmer, global health advocate who died unexpectedly this week.
Medicago’s homegrown, plant-based COVID-19 vaccine approved by Health Canada
Medicago’s plant-based COVID-19 vaccine is now approved by Health Canada, which will soon give Canadians the option of getting a homegrown shot against SARS-CoV-2.
Regulators announced the decision to allow its use for adults 18 to 64 years of age on Thursday, making this the sixth vaccine approved in Canada, on the heels of Health Canada’s approval of Novavax last week.
In what the biopharmaceutical company calls a world first, the vaccine from Quebec City-based Medicago uses plant-derived, virus-like particles that resemble the coronavirus behind COVID-19 but don’t contain its genetic material. The shots also contain an adjuvant from British-American vaccine giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to help boost the immune response.
Dubbed “Covifenz,” the two-dose shot’s overall efficacy rate against all virus variants studied was 71 per cent, with a higher efficacy rate of 75 per cent against COVID-19 infections of any severity from the Delta variant, then dominant, according to data shared at the time in a news release. The results followed a global, Phase 3, placebo-controlled study of the two-dose vaccine that was launched last March and continued into a time period when the Delta variant was circulating.
The trial preceded the arrival of the highly contagious Omicron family of subvariants, including BA.1 and BA.2, although the company has said the vaccine can be adapted as needed.
“We will, in the next several months, know how well our vaccine did against Omicron,” the company’s medical officer, Dr. Brian Ward, told CBC News, citing ongoing company trials, which also include a study on a booster dose that’s slated to start within weeks.
Health Canada has recommended a three-week interval at minimum for the two-dose regimen, with typical, temporary potential side-effects seen with most other COVID-19 vaccines: a sore arm, headaches, joint and muscle pain and fever-like symptoms.
Canada previously signed a deal to buy 20 million doses of Medicago’s vaccine, with an option for 56 million more.
It’s not clear when production will be ramped up, but given Canada’s vaccination rates for adults — 84.5 per cent of the eligible population is considered fully vaccinated — it could eventually be employed more in the campaign to vaccinate underserved populations around the globe.
Without offering specifics, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer Dr. Howard Njoo said during a news conference that the federal government is “committed to the global effort to supply vaccines across the world.”
In the past, Medicago’s Ward has touted the benefits of transporting its vaccine around the world in comparison to some other products, which use yeast, insect or mammalian cells that need to be stored in glass containers called bioreactors. It also needs to be stored at manageable temperatures of 2 to 8 C.
What’s most hopeful, said Toronto-based infectious diseases expert Dr. Isaac Bogoch, is how plant-based technology could help future vaccine development.
“Is this going to have a major impact on us here in Canada? Probably not. But there might be some individuals who choose to get vaccinated with a non-mRNA product,” said Bogoch, referring to the shots offered by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
In a GSK news release in December, it was stated that there are plans to seek approval for the Medicago shots with the World Health Organization, as well as in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan. It’s not clear if decisions in any of those cases are near.
From CBC News
Alberta wants to use private clinics to address surgery backlog
The Alberta government has proposed using private clinics to relieve pressure on the health-care system and clear surgical backlogs worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan would see up to 90,000 surgeries done at the private clinics but paid for by the province. 1:59
Reinfections from Omicron subvariant BA.2 seem rare, study finds, making ‘new wave’ unlikely
Out of nearly two million coronavirus infections logged in Denmark between mid-November and mid-February, researchers there zeroed in on those who tested positive twice between 20 and 60 days apart, and whose infections had gone through previous genomic surveillance and were labelled as a specific subvariant.
The team at Statens Serum Institut (SSI) found in a study published this week but not yet peer-reviewed only 187 cases of reinfection. That included 47 instances where Omicron subvariant BA.2 reinfections happened shortly after a BA.1 infection, “mostly in young unvaccinated individuals with mild disease not resulting in hospitalization or death,” the team wrote.
In other words, getting infected more than once by subvariants in the Omicron family does seem possible, but it appears to be not a common risk.
One of the researchers, Dr. Troels Lillebæk, chair of Denmark’s SARS-CoV-2 variant assessment committee, told CBC News this offers the first evidence of reinfections among members of the Omicron family, but it appears to be a “quite rare phenomenon.”
“If it was a major problem that you could catch BA.2 after BA.1, you could imagine a new wave,” he said. “This does not really point in that direction.”
The highly contagious BA.2 subvariant now makes up roughly nine in 10 cases in Denmark, with cases also rising in countries including Norway, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Here in Canada, the subvariant was barely a blip in federal data by early January, but the latest-available data by month’s end suggest it makes up roughly one in 10 cases.
Some 1.25 million Canadians were infected with COVID-19 in December and January, according to CBC tracking of provincially released data, almost certainly an undercount as officials across the country stressed that the high transmissibility of Omicron was overwhelming case surveillance to a degree not seen in previous variants.
“So many people are vaccinated and boosted or have had BA.1 recently that they’re not very likely to be reinfected so quickly afterwards with BA.2,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO).
“We should start thinking about the next variant that’s going to come along rather than worrying so much about BA.2.”
Further to Rasmussen’s point, a recent New York Magazine article by science writer Jeff Wise expounded on the twists and turns involving COVID-19 variants over the course of two years.
“None of the variants of concern have led to the next variants of concern,” Emma Hodcroft, epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, told Wise.
Alberta expands vaccine access, encourages parents to get kids 5-to-11 inoculated
Alberta’s government is concerned about low COVID-19 vaccination rates for children and wants to push provincial numbers closer to the national average, Health Minister Jason Copping said Wednesday.
Copping told a news conference that Alberta’s government doesn’t have a “specific target” in mind for increasing childhood vaccination rates.
“But we would like to move closer [to] — and even achieve — the average across the country,” he said. The province has among the lowest vaccination rates for children in Canada. As of Monday, 47.1 per cent of Alberta children ages five to 11 have had one dose of vaccine, while 23.6 per cent of the same age group have had two doses.
That compares to vaccination rates of 56.11 per cent and 27.9 per cent respectively for Canadian children in the same age group, according to federal data from Feb. 13. The highest-ranking province is Newfoundland and Labrador, where 85.24 per cent of children ages five to 11 have had one dose and 40.27 per cent have had two.
Copping said surveys have previously shown “more reluctance” among parents in Alberta to get their children vaccinated, with many parents “taking a wait-and-see attitude,” he said. Other parents whose children have contracted COVID-19 during the Omicron wave are holding back on getting them vaccinated, Copping added.
In a bid to boost rates in Alberta children, the province has increased the availability of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines, making access widely available at pharmacies, physician offices and Alberta Health Services clinics, the minister said.
As stated in a newsletter last month, while there’s certainly room for Canada’s five-to-11 vaccination rate to grow, the uptake is not at all out of step for Western or developed countries using vaccines other than Chinese or Russian brands. In fact, Canada appears to be near the top in terms of vaccination pace along with countries such as Spain and Australia.
Canada’s pace is well ahead of countries such as the United States, Israel, France, Italy and Denmark.
Britain, Norway and Sweden — all countries moving into a non-emergency phase of “living with COVID” — are not vaccinating children that young en masse, although there are some exceptions for ill or immunocompromised kids. Meanwhile, Japan won’t start their campaign for that age cohort until next week.
Today’s graphic
Find out more about COVID-19
For full coverage of how your province or territory is responding to COVID-19, visit your local CBC News site.
To get this newsletter daily as an email, subscribe here.
See the answers to COVID-19 questions asked by CBC viewers and readers.
Still looking for more information on the pandemic? Reach out to us at covid@cbc.ca if you have any questions.
The latest on the coronavirus outbreak for February 24th. Ontario hospitalization numbers falling as capacity limits are loosened. ‘The bane of our existence’: Travel industry employees welcome change on PCR test rules. World roundup: Hong Kong hospitals stretched, Japan suffering near pandemic-record death toll. Explore: Federal government ends use of Emergencies Act utilized to tamp down COVID-related protests…. Manitoba health-care workers will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination…. New Brunswick set to lay out next steps for dealing with COVID-19…. Anthony Fauci pays tribute on CBC’s As It Happens to Dr. Paul Farmer, global health advocate who died unexpectedly this week. Health workers in personal protective equipment record COVID-19 nasal swab antigen test results in Bangkok on Thursday, a day in which Thailand reported its largest number of new daily coronavirus infections — more than 23,500 in total — since the start of the pandemic. (Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images) Medicago’s homegrown, plant-based COVID-19 vaccine approved by Health Canada Medicago’s plant-based COVID-19 vaccine is now approved by Health Canada, which will soon give Canadians the option of getting a homegrown shot against SARS-CoV-2. Regulators announced the decision to allow its use for adults 18 to 64 years of age on Thursday, making this the sixth vaccine approved in Canada, on the heels of Health Canada’s approval of Novavax last week. In what the biopharmaceutical company calls a world first, the vaccine from Quebec City-based Medicago uses plant-derived, virus-like particles that resemble the coronavirus behind COVID-19 but don’t contain its genetic material. The shots also contain an adjuvant from British-American vaccine giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to help boost the immune response. Dubbed “Covifenz,” the two-dose shot’s overall efficacy rate against all virus variants studied was 71 per cent, with a higher efficacy rate of 75 per cent against COVID-19 infections of any severity from the Delta variant, then dominant, according to data shared at the time in a news release. The results followed a global, Phase 3, placebo-controlled study of the two-dose vaccine that was launched last March and continued into a time period when the Delta variant was circulating. The trial preceded the arrival of the highly contagious Omicron family of subvariants, including BA.1 and BA.2, although the company has said the vaccine can be adapted as needed. “We will, in the next several months, know how well our vaccine did against Omicron,” the company’s medical officer, Dr. Brian Ward, told CBC News, citing ongoing company trials, which also include a study on a booster dose that’s slated to start within weeks. Health Canada has recommended a three-week interval at minimum for the two-dose regimen, with typical, temporary potential side-effects seen with most other COVID-19 vaccines: a sore arm, headaches, joint and muscle pain and fever-like symptoms. Canada previously signed a deal to buy 20 million doses of Medicago’s vaccine, with an option for 56 million more. It’s not clear when production will be ramped up, but given Canada’s vaccination rates for adults — 84.5 per cent of the eligible population is considered fully vaccinated — it could eventually be employed more in the campaign to vaccinate underserved populations around the globe. Without offering specifics, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer Dr. Howard Njoo said during a news conference that the federal government is “committed to the global effort to supply vaccines across the world.” In the past, Medicago’s Ward has touted the benefits of transporting its vaccine around the world in comparison to some other products, which use yeast, insect or mammalian cells that need to be stored in glass containers called bioreactors. It also needs to be stored at manageable temperatures of 2 to 8 C. What’s most hopeful, said Toronto-based infectious diseases expert Dr. Isaac Bogoch, is how plant-based technology could help future vaccine development. “Is this going to have a major impact on us here in Canada? Probably not. But there might be some individuals who choose to get vaccinated with a non-mRNA product,” said Bogoch, referring to the shots offered by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. In a GSK news release in December, it was stated that there are plans to seek approval for the Medicago shots with the World Health Organization, as well as in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan. It’s not clear if decisions in any of those cases are near. From CBC News Alberta wants to use private clinics to address surgery backlogThe Alberta government has proposed using private clinics to relieve pressure on the health-care system and clear surgical backlogs worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan would see up to 90,000 surgeries done at the private clinics but paid for by the province. 1:59 Reinfections from Omicron subvariant BA.2 seem rare, study finds, making ‘new wave’ unlikely Out of nearly two million coronavirus infections logged in Denmark between mid-November and mid-February, researchers there zeroed in on those who tested positive twice between 20 and 60 days apart, and whose infections had gone through previous genomic surveillance and were labelled as a specific subvariant. The team at Statens Serum Institut (SSI) found in a study published this week but not yet peer-reviewed only 187 cases of reinfection. That included 47 instances where Omicron subvariant BA.2 reinfections happened shortly after a BA.1 infection, “mostly in young unvaccinated individuals with mild disease not resulting in hospitalization or death,” the team wrote. In other words, getting infected more than once by subvariants in the Omicron family does seem possible, but it appears to be not a common risk. One of the researchers, Dr. Troels Lillebæk, chair of Denmark’s SARS-CoV-2 variant assessment committee, told CBC News this offers the first evidence of reinfections among members of the Omicron family, but it appears to be a “quite rare phenomenon.” “If it was a major problem that you could catch BA.2 after BA.1, you could imagine a new wave,” he said. “This does not really point in that direction.” The highly contagious BA.2 subvariant now makes up roughly nine in 10 cases in Denmark, with cases also rising in countries including Norway, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Here in Canada, the subvariant was barely a blip in federal data by early January, but the latest-available data by month’s end suggest it makes up roughly one in 10 cases. Some 1.25 million Canadians were infected with COVID-19 in December and January, according to CBC tracking of provincially released data, almost certainly an undercount as officials across the country stressed that the high transmissibility of Omicron was overwhelming case surveillance to a degree not seen in previous variants. “So many people are vaccinated and boosted or have had BA.1 recently that they’re not very likely to be reinfected so quickly afterwards with BA.2,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO). “We should start thinking about the next variant that’s going to come along rather than worrying so much about BA.2.” Further to Rasmussen’s point, a recent New York Magazine article by science writer Jeff Wise expounded on the twists and turns involving COVID-19 variants over the course of two years. “None of the variants of concern have led to the next variants of concern,” Emma Hodcroft, epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, told Wise. Alberta expands vaccine access, encourages parents to get kids 5-to-11 inoculated Alberta’s government is concerned about low COVID-19 vaccination rates for children and wants to push provincial numbers closer to the national average, Health Minister Jason Copping said Wednesday. Copping told a news conference that Alberta’s government doesn’t have a “specific target” in mind for increasing childhood vaccination rates. “But we would like to move closer [to] — and even achieve — the average across the country,” he said. The province has among the lowest vaccination rates for children in Canada. As of Monday, 47.1 per cent of Alberta children ages five to 11 have had one dose of vaccine, while 23.6 per cent of the same age group have had two doses. That compares to vaccination rates of 56.11 per cent and 27.9 per cent respectively for Canadian children in the same age group, according to federal data from Feb. 13. The highest-ranking province is Newfoundland and Labrador, where 85.24 per cent of children ages five to 11 have had one dose and 40.27 per cent have had two. Copping said surveys have previously shown “more reluctance” among parents in Alberta to get their children vaccinated, with many parents “taking a wait-and-see attitude,” he said. Other parents whose children have contracted COVID-19 during the Omicron wave are holding back on getting them vaccinated, Copping added. In a bid to boost rates in Alberta children, the province has increased the availability of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines, making access widely available at pharmacies, physician offices and Alberta Health Services clinics, the minister said. As stated in a newsletter last month, while there’s certainly room for Canada’s five-to-11 vaccination rate to grow, the uptake is not at all out of step for Western or developed countries using vaccines other than Chinese or Russian brands. In fact, Canada appears to be near the top in terms of vaccination pace along with countries such as Spain and Australia. Canada’s pace is well ahead of countries such as the United States, Israel, France, Italy and Denmark. Britain, Norway and Sweden — all countries moving into a non-emergency phase of “living with COVID” — are not vaccinating children that young en masse, although there are some exceptions for ill or immunocompromised kids. Meanwhile, Japan won’t start their campaign for that age cohort until next week. Today’s graphic Find out more about COVID-19 For full coverage of how your province or territory is responding to COVID-19, visit your local CBC News site. To get this newsletter daily as an email, subscribe here. See the answers to COVID-19 questions asked by CBC viewers and readers. Still looking for more information on the pandemic? Reach out to us at covid@cbc.ca if you have any questions.