OTTAWA Canada is planning for whats poised to be its largest-ever vaccination campaign.
In a few weeks, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is expected to release an interim statement listing which priority groups should get first access to an authorized COVID-19 vaccine, when one or many become available .
Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh is the chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), the external advisory group responsible for identifying which groups should get COVID-19 vaccine priority. This sort of triage is necessary and similar to how the H1N1 vaccine was first rolled out.
Of course the problem currently is we dont know which vaccine is going to be available and how many doses, Quach-Thanh told HuffPost Canada.
There wont be enough vaccines available for everyone, at least at first. The number of doses in that initial stock, which could vary from tens of thousands to millions, will dictate the scale of an initial vaccination campaign.
We have to remain quite theoretical about it, Quach-Thanh said.
Watch: Chief public health officer says Health Canada aims to speed COVID-19 vaccine approvals. Story continues below video.
During the H1N1 influenza pandemic , six groups were given priority to the first round of vaccines. They included: people under 65 with chronic medical conditions, pregnant women, children between the ages of six months and five, residents in remote and isolated communities, front-line health-care workers, and household contacts and caregivers of high-risk people and individuals who cant be vaccinated.
Quach-Thanh said priority groups for early COVID-19 vaccine distribution might differ a bit because we are now looking at it through a different lens. But a risk group is still a risk group, she said.
NACI has already identified priority groups for a potential COVID-19 vaccine. That list is currently before provincial and territorial governments, and public health groups for review. Quach-Thanh said notes will be collected and returned to NACIs committee of experts for final approval before its signed off by PHAC for public release.
The interim list of priority groups will be subject to an additional final revision when duration of immunity and the number of available doses of an approved vaccine are known.
You really have to plan ahead.
- Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh, chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization
We have to start thinking about this because if we wait to know what vaccine has made it through to Health Canada, we wont have enough time to think it through, the infectious diseases expert told HuffPost Canada. You really have to plan ahead.
Because of the pandemic circumstance, Canadians will not have to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine. Quach-Thanh offered a pragmatic explanation: Because there wont be enough vaccines for people to purchase it on their own.
Health care is a provincial and territorial responsibility, so it will be up to those jurisdictions to implement rules and administer vaccine clinics which could lead to varying approaches like the different school reopening plans across the country. Some provinces and territories, such as British Columbia , Ontario , Manitoba , Quebec , already have living plans in place to mitigate future influenza pandemics.
The process to ensure those plans are scalable and flexible enough to shape future COVID-19 vaccine distribution has many experts looking to the lessons from 2009-2010 when the H1N1 influenza pandemic gripped peoples attention.
There are so many variables in the current set up because its a novel virus, explained Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association. And thats what differentiates it so greatly from H1N1.
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In the spring and summer of 2009, the H1N1 influenza virus was the first flu pandemic the world had seen in 40 years. In Canada, the first cases were recorded in late April. It infected thousands, nearly doubling the number of hospitalized adults between 20 and 64 compared to the seasonal flu. Children under five were also hospitalized at a high rate due to the H1N1 virus. By the pandemics end, 428 people had died here. COVID-19, in comparison, has had a more devastating impact, resulting in more than 9,140 deaths and more than 131,000 reported cases as of Friday.
According to Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, 88.5 per cent of people who have reported COVID-19 cases have recovered.
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