OTTAWA The federal government is expecting Moderna to make good this week on a previously promised batch of 855,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses that were expected last week. Those delayed doses, along with a little more than one million shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, make up the extent of Canada s expected vaccine deliveries this week. Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military officer overseeing the federal government s vaccination distribution effort, has blamed the Moderna delay on a backlog with quality assurance. Officials have indicated there could be a similar delay in the delivery of 1.2 million doses from Moderna next week. In comparison, Pfizer-BioNTech has been consistently delivering more than one million shots to Canada each week for more than a month.
Dozens of Americans are rolling up their sleeves for a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine this time, shots tweaked to guard against a worrisome mutated version of the virus. Make no mistake: The vaccines currently being rolled out across the U.S. offer strong protection. But new studies of experimental updates to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines mark a critical first step toward an alternative if the virus eventually outsmarts today s shots. We need to be ahead of the virus, said Dr. Nadine Rouphael of Emory University, who is helping to lead a study of Moderna s tweaked candidate. We know what it s like when we re behind.
The issue of vaccine passports is one rife with the potential for discrimination, and should be approached with a focus on fairness above the economic benefits, says one bioethicist.