Seemingly good news out of Toronto:
Canada will have a pandemic vaccine by early next month, and could speed up delivery to Canadians if the swine-flu virus turns more severe in the fall, the country’s chief public-health officer says.
The comments by David Butler-Jones’s comments run contrary to the federal government’s insistence that Canadians should not expect to be immunized until mid-November, and follow a rash of criticism that Canada is lagging behind other countries in vaccine delivery.
“We will have vaccine available in early October produced. The question is do we have enough information to be comfortable with immunizing at that point or not? If the next phase of the pandemic comes much earlier than we expect, or is much more severe than we’ve seen, then that changes the equation,” Dr. Butler-Jones said in an interview.
“If we’ve got reasonable data on safety and effectiveness and we’re seeing a worsening disease, then we can move up when we start immunizing, if that’s appropriate.”
Canada has ordered 50 million doses from GlaxoSmithKline, which is contracted to produce the vaccine for all Canadians. While other countries are rolling out non-adjuvant vaccine for high-risk groups, Canada has decided to blanket the country with an adjuvant vaccine.
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