Provinces adjust H1N1 vaccine campaigns
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 | 6:19 PM ET
CBC News
A boy gets his shot of swine flu vaccine at a Vancouver clinic on Monday. (CBC)Several provinces announced updated plans for their swine flu vaccination programs on Tuesday.
Saskatchewan's Health Ministry said it will expand the province's H1N1 vaccination program to include schoolchildren from kindergarten to Grade 6 this week.
This week, provinces received a fraction of the H1N1 vaccine compared with previous weeks. Next week, it's expected that vaccine shipments will return to high levels.
The H1N1 vaccine, known as Arepranix H1N1, is also in short supply this week in British Columbia, where concerns are being raised about who can or cannot get the shot.
For now, the focus remains on those exposed to a high risk, such as front-line health-care workers, Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada's chief public health officer, told reporters from Vancouver.
Depending on the community, between 10 to 20 per cent of Canadians have already been immunized, more than anywhere else in the world, Butler-Jones said.
Cases in B.C. and the Northwest Territories started to climb two to three weeks earlier than the rest of the country. People in the West remain vulnerable to H1N1, and if they are immunized, they could avoid the December-January peak in infections, he added.
"We are doing better than any other country in producing vaccine on a per capita basis, with one company," said Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq told a news conference.
Canada will consider using more than one supplier for future pandemics "to hedge our bets," Butler-Jones said.
Nova Scotia on Tuesday started offering the H1N1 vaccine to pregnant women and women who recently gave birth, children between the ages of six months and five years, health-care workers and members of First Nations communities.
Children under age 15 have shown the highest risk of H1N1 infection but they are not at high risk of dying from it, Butler-Jones said. That's why children under age five are included in the high-risk group but older children and young people are not.
Newfoundland and Labrador will expand the list of groups that have priority to receive the H1N1 vaccine after the province's next shipment of H1N1 vaccine arrives on Wednesday.
Alberta's swine flu vaccination clinics will resume on Thursday, but only for children between six months and five years old. Parents will be asked to provide proof of age, and family members who line up with their children won't be vaccinated.
City clinics
Clinics are running in Halifax, Dartmouth and Lower Sackville, N.S., where the health authority says people in priority groups don't have to line up for the shot. Others will be turned away.
In Nunavut, pregnant women will soon be able to receive the adjuvant-free version of the H1N1 vaccine. The territory's first shipments will be received late Tuesday, said Dr. Isaac Sobol, the territory's chief medical officer.
An adjuvant is a substance added to a vaccine to stimulate a stronger immune response. National guidelines recommend that pregnant women get the adjuvant-free version of the H1N1 vaccine because there has not been a lot of research done on the use of adjuvants during pregnancy.
Health officials in Winnipeg said nearly 10,000 residents received the H1N1 shot on Monday, the last day mass immunization clinics were open, raising the total number of people vaccinated in the city to just under 75,000.
Clinics in Brandon also closed on Tuesday after running out of doses of the vaccine. The cities are taking a day-to-day approach to determine when they might reopen.
In P.E.I., the school absentee rate due to the flu rose to 30 per cent at four schools, two in the Charlottetown area and two west of Summerside. There were no immediate plans to close them.
