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Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, defended the decision to extend second doses to 35 days, saying it had been taken in consultation with clinical and immunization experts in B.C. The decision included an ethical review, an examination of the vaccine data, modelling of how many people could best be protected and how much and when vaccine is expected to arrive, she said.
“Absolutely the science bears out that this is a reasonable approach that maximizes our ability to protect more people during this the most infectious period where we have the highest rates of transmission,” Henry said during a briefing Thursday.
The periods between doses are established in the trials of each company’s vaccine. The first dose introduces an element of the virus that creates an immune response in the body that teaches it to fight off the virus. The second dose helps increase protection against the virus.
Pfizer and BioNTech warned this week that there is no data to demonstrate that protection after only single dose is sustained after 21 days.
Leading global health authorities such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S. since 1984, has spoken out against extending the period for second doses.
The World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also warned this week against deviating from the prescribed dose schedules.
In Canada, the country’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, has asked the National Advisory Committee on Immunization to investigate whether it would be warranted to delay the second doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in a bid to get first doses to more people faster.
“This is a topic of, of course, active discussion,” Tam said this week.
She noted the situation is grim in Canada, with more than 7,500 new patients diagnosed every day, more than 77,700 people currently infected with the virus, and more than 4,000 infected people in the nation’s hospitals.
Over the last week, an average of 122 Canadians have died of COVID-19 every day.
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