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Mayor Drew Dilkens questioned the public health recommendation on mixing COVID-19 vaccines in a seven-minute rant on radio Wednesday.
People who received first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines may get the Moderna vaccine for their second doses based on supply, and they “should feel confident that we are not compromising on the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines,” Medical Officer of Health Dr. Wajid Ahmed told a public briefing Wednesday.
But as Ahmed was saying that, Dilkens was telling CKLW’s The Morning Drive that he won’t accept a different vaccine for his second dose, and he won’t be a “mouthpiece” for public health officials telling people to accept whichever vaccine they’re offered first.
Canada is receiving a huge shipment of Moderna — 7.1 million doses — this week. It’s not clear how many doses Windsor and Essex County will receive, but it will be many.
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The message now is to get your second dose so we as a community can move forward
The concern is there won’t be enough people who want it. They’ll want Pfizer, the vaccine that the majority of people received for their first shot. But with the more transmissible Delta variant spreading in Canada, public health officials are urging everyone to accept whichever vaccine they can get first and assuring them that it’s safe and effective to mix vaccines.
“We are going to get a lot of Moderna so at some point it is likely that people who received Pfizer or AstraZeneca, that they could be getting a second dose of Moderna,” Windsor Essex County Health Unit CEO Theresa Marentette said. “We’re trying to match second doses with first doses, but based on vaccine supply, we may have to interchange them, and that is completely acceptable, and that is what we plan to do.”
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Data from studies on mixing viral vector vaccines like AstraZeneca with mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and Quebec show that there are no concerns about safety and effectiveness, Ahmed said.
In some cases, it might even trigger a stronger immune response.
However, there haven’t been any studies on mixing mRNA vaccines.
But, said Ahmed, mixing vaccines is not new and is acceptable if it meets certain conditions. For example, the vaccines must be authorized for the same indications, contain a comparable type and amount of antigen, target the same population, follow a comparable schedule and be similar in safety and efficacy.
“When we’re talking about COVID-19 vaccines, all of these conditions have been met,” he said.
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There are already guidelines for mixing vaccines for all kinds of diseases, from polio to flu.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization now strongly recommends taking the first COVID-19 vaccine you can get.
“We’re living in a pandemic,” Ahmed said. “When we have the vaccine, we want to make sure it gets into the arms of the people. We don’t want the community to continue to see ongoing transmission. We don’t want people to die. We don’t want people to get hospitalized. Those are the bigger issues.
“The message now is to get your second dose so we as a community can move forward.”
Meanwhile, the mayor said, “My own opinion is I’ve had the first dose of one drug. I’m going to wait until I can get the same drug as a second dose.
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“I’m not going to be the mouthpiece and just say take whatever vaccine you can get,” he said.
“If I’ve had first dose Pfizer and I don’t want to jump to get second dose Moderna, that’s a choice that I’m making. We have respect everyone’s choice.”
If the region receives tens of thousands of doses of Moderna and expects people who received a different vaccine for their first shot to “just jump in and take it,” Dilkens warned, “I think you’ll start seeing a little bit of hesitancy from people who are just willing to wait it out.”
That could mean it will take longer to reach the vaccination targets that governments have set, he said.
“It’s right for us to pause because we are in the world’s largest human trial here,” he said, despite the race between second doses and the Delta variant.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States isn’t recommending mixing vaccines unless the circumstances are exceptional, he said. He went on to compare other aspects of Canada’s vaccine rollout to that of the U.S., implying that Canada, like the U.S., should not have approved AstraZeneca. He neglected to say that U.S. approved the Janssen vaccine, which is similar to AstraZeneca, and that 80 per cent of people in the UK, a vaccine leader, received AstraZeneca.
He also implied that Canada shouldn’t have extended the interval between doses to four months. The U.S. didn’t. But that extension is credited in part for Canada now leading the world in first doses.
All of this happened because Canada doesn’t have enough vaccine, he said.
Mayor questions mixing COVID-19 vaccines - Windsor Star
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