Health Canada has approved two new COVID-19 vaccines. On Friday morning, the federal health agency announced the approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine and the Serum Institute of India vaccine, India’s version of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Canada has pre-ordered 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was co-developed by researchers at the University of Oxford and will receive an additional 1.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as COVAX by the end of June.
The vaccines are authorized for use in people over 18 years of age and are administered as a two-dose regimen. Doses of the AstraZeneca shot can be stored at temperatures between 2 C to 8 C, while the other two require ultra-cold freezers much like the Pfizer vaccine.
Approval of the much talked about Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine will likely not come until early March and the Novavax vaccine is not expected until April, the earliest.
Health Canada says the vaccine is 62% effective at preventing cases of COVID-19, overall.
Approximately 1.7 million doses of those formulas have been administered in Canada.
For more information, we recommend reading this very detailed report from the Montreal Gazette.
