First vaccines to arrive next week

By Peter Jackson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Telegram

Dec 07, 2020

Newfoundland and Labrador is getting an early Christmas present next week — its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccine doses.

The news seems to have taken even local leaders by surprise, but Premier Andrew Furey was only too happy to announce the development Monday after weeks of assuming the first doses wouldn’t arrive until the new year.

The shipment of 1,950 doses is part of a 249,000-dose allotment made to Canada by Pfizer/BioNTech, a U.S.-German partnership and the first company to announce successful Phase 3 trials.

The Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s is one of 14 distribution sites across the country announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier in the day.

Another shipment will arrive the week of Dec. 21.

“This is big news for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and for the country and, indeed, the world,” Furey said, a tone of relief in his voice. “Hope is on the horizon.”

Deep freeze

The logistics have yet to be worked out, but one of the key issues is storage, as the Pfizer vaccine has to be kept at a temperature of at least -70 C.

Furey said the province is participating in a dry run with two empty “thermal shippers” that will arrive in St. John’s later this week. The containers use dry ice to keep the cargo at the necessary cold temperature.

He said the province is also acquiring two new ultra deep freezers to help with storage, although some health facilities already have them on hand.

A vaccination team chaired by Health Minister Dr. John Haggie, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald and others was recently formed to plan the rollout of the vaccine.

Furey said he is confident the team can step up its efforts to meet the challenges posed by the early shipments.

Priority groups

Fitzgerald said there are some company requirements on how the initial doses are distributed that she is unable to reveal at this time. However, she said prioritization of the rollout will ultimately happen transparently.

Health-care workers and vulnerable populations such as seniors and Indigenous people are among the first who will be vaccinated, but Fitzgerald said other priorities are still being established.

She added that people who have recovered from COVID-19 will not be excluded from vaccination, as the long-term immunity from infection or from the vaccine is not yet clear.

The Pfizer product is one of two vaccines that use the revolutionary technique of injecting genetic code, called messenger RNA, or mRNA. The other, by American company Moderna, is also expected to be green-lit for use any day.

Rather than using dead viral material, mRNA vaccine instructs the recipient’s own muscle cells to create a small amount of a key coronavirus protein to trigger the body’s immune response.

Moderna says its vaccine does not need to be stored in ultra deep freezers.

Both require a second dose four to six weeks after the first one.

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Canada has pre-ordered vaccine from both sources, as well as traditional vaccines from a handful of other developers.