“I think our targets are realistic,”: Federal Health Minister on Canada’s immunization plan

Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu is confident 70% of Canada’s population could be vaccinated for COVID-19 by September.

In a document released by the country’s Public Health Agency, Canada’s immunization plan could be completed by the end of next year.

In an interview with Vista Radio, Hajdu believes their targets can be met.

“I think those targets are realistic. I mean obviously, it depends on the willingness of Canadians to get vaccinated but on the abilities of Canada to procure vaccines and then for the provinces and territories to distribute them, I can think from that end it’s realistic.”

With healthcare workers and our elderly population at the front of the line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, will the general population have to wait until the summer to get vaccinated?

Hajdu added it’s likely any treatment for the coronavirus will be made available to Canadians that want it.

“I think optimistically it would be great to start to see Canadians outside of the priority population have access to vaccines come the summertime but it’s really hard to predict given how many moving parts there are.”

On Wednesday, Ottawa approved the Pfizer-BioNTech treatment for use in Canada by putting the finishing touches on a plan to roll out the first doses to roughly 124,500 Canadians with a priority placed on those working on the frontlines.

With the first vaccinations set to begin next week, Hajdu was blown away at how the approval process came to fruition before the end of 2020.

“I was pretty impressed to see how quickly Health Canada was able to assess the data, to really ensure its integrity and then approve it for Canadians so that is good news,” Hajdu.

The Federal Health Minister also mentioned that approval for the Moderna COVID-19  vaccine candidate may not be too far away.

However, they have been some rumblings that Ottawa didn’t move fast enough in securing vaccine candidates, falling behind other countries like the United Kingdom who received the Pfizer treatment first.

But, Hajdu disagreed with the sentiment stating Canada is well-positioned to receive any and all treatments in a timely fashion.

“We are actually the third country in the world to approve Pfizer so we are well ahead of other countries in the queue and in fact, we will be vaccinating early next week. We will possibly be the second G-7 country to do so. We’ve got the most diverse of vaccines, the most doses per capita and we are one of the earliest countries to vaccinate so I’m not sure what those criticisms are based on.”

Britain’s health regulator also noted people who have a history of severe allergic reactions should not be taking the Pfizer vaccine.

The revelation came after two hospital workers with such a history suffered a severe reaction to their inoculations yesterday, as the country’s mass immunization but both are recovering well.

Hajdu isn’t worried by the findings as Canadians will need to be very clear with healthcare providers on what their allergies are to determine, which treatments are best for them.

“We will be monitoring any of those adverse outcomes with vaccines along the way, we have a sophisticated monitoring approach with provinces and territories so that we can understand those adverse outcomes as well as how it is tracking for immunity and how many Canadians have been vaccinated.”

Dr. Bonnie Henry noted about sixty percent of the BC population will need to receive the vaccine before orders can be eased, they are hoping to reach that goal between May and July of next year.

Under BC’s immunization plan, the province expects to have 400-thousand people vaccinated by the end of March.