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There are SEVEN vaccines in the final phase of clinical trials.
The Trudeau govt bought none of those. Instead it bought the Novavax, which is in the middle phase.
This means Canada will get vaccine months later than other countries. #Fail https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/novavax-covid-19-vaccine-1.5706067
The Trudeau govt bought none of those. Instead it bought the Novavax, which is in the middle phase.
This means Canada will get vaccine months later than other countries. #Fail https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/novavax-covid-19-vaccine-1.5706067
Aside from being late, the Novavax option is less promising than its competition. There is no evidence it elicits a useful killer T-cell (CD8+ cell) response to date, which several other vaccines do. It only gives rise to antibodies that we know of. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.05.20168435v1.full.pdf
Another disadvantage is that Novavax is not yet in ANY large-scale clinical trial. They only began recruiting for their phase 2 clinical trial today, and it's TINY, with only about 10% of the trial subjects the competition now has. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04533399?term=novavax&recrs=adf&draw=2&rank=2
I'm afraid. The decision to buy Novavax, but not more proven vaccines, very strongly suggests the govt acted too slowly to secure the most promising products, and is now grasping for something, ANYTHING, that is still available. Canadians should not expect this to end well.
UPDATE: a few hours after posting this, the Prime Minister has said that Canada is assured a minimum of 20 million doses of a vaccine. That's far from enough, and it's only one vaccine where we need several, but it's better than Canada had this morning. https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2020/08/31/new-measures-ensure-supply-future-vaccines-and-therapies-against
