Canada has agreed to donate nearly 18m doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to low-and middle-income countries around the world.
Canadian Procurement Minister Anita Anand has said that the vaccine doses are a part of the Canadian government’s advance purchase agreement with the company and would be distributed through COVAX - a global vaccine-sharing initiative jointly co-ordinated by the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
The Public Health Agency of Canada and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization have “recommended” mRNA vaccines such as Moderna or Pfizer over AstraZeneca.
The recommendation was made in the wake of evidence suggesting that, in rare cases, the AstraZeneca vaccine could cause potentially fatal blood clots in some people.
It comes after the US said in May that it is sending abroad AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine it cannot use - because its regulatory system has not yet approved its use. It still has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The US has already shared over 4 million doses of its AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico.
At the end of April the US said it would provide 60 million doses of their AstraZeneca vaccine overseas, once it clears federal safety reviews.
It is claimed that with less than a week remaining to fulful President Joe Biden's pledge to share 80m doses of Covid vaccine with countries in need - production problems are said to be forcing the administration to revise a plan to send AstraZeneca doses overseas.
The FDA has been reviewing whether AstraZeneca doses produced at a Baltimore plant are safe to send abroad, and the country meanwhile has built up a steady supply of other vaccines used in the US innoculation campaign.
Officials are said to be working to replace tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that it had initially planned to include in the donation with others made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
in the US,AstraZeneca’s vaccine is much cheaper than the other three vaccines with federal governments paying $4 per dose, compared with as much as $19.50 for Pfizer.
At the end of April, AstraZeneca said it had intended to seek US authorisation for in the “coming weeks”. It had been expected by mid-April.
While delivering its first quarter financial results, at the end of April, it emerged the company delivered 68 million doses of the vaccine to the European Union, United Kingdom and other countries in the first three months of the year.
The company had said it was continuing to work on its application to US's Food and Drug Administration for emergency-use authorisation noting the “substantial size of the file" that will include data from US trials as well all other studies completed so far and real-world data collected from use of the vaccine in other countries.
It is unlikely that Americans will get the AstraZeneca shot, even though the US had ordered 300 million doses of the vaccine in a $1 billion deal.
Canada has administered roughly three million doses of AstraZeneca, with the majority of doses administered across the country being the mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna.
Canadian procurement minister Anita Anand said it is sending excess AstraZeneca doses which came from an advance purchase agreement for 20m doses the government struck with the company.
She said the doses, which will be manufactured in the United States, will start being delivered to COVAX in the coming weeks.
“This donation is a result of our proactive approach to securing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines in our initial contracts. With close to 55 million vaccines in Canada, and with the demands of the provinces and territories for this vaccine being met, we are now in a position to donate these excess doses."
Among issues AstraZeneca is having to address in the US are indications that the vaccine was linked to rare blood clots, particularly in younger people.
In April, the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises how vaccines should be used, recommended healthy people under 30 be offered a different vaccine.
Vaccine experts say the blood clots are very rare and less than the blood clot risks of women taking birth control.
They say that for the vast majority of people the benefits of the vaccine vastly outweighs the risks.
By the end of April, according to the UK medical regulator, the MHRA, 79 cases were identified, and 19 people died.
This was out of a total of more than 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which has been given in the UK at that time.
Meanwhile a 72-year-old woman has died almost three weeks after the AstraZeneca jab.
Health officials said on Monday the South Australian woman's death is 'likely' linked to her consumption of the vaccine, making her just the fourth person to die of complications relating to the shot out of more than five million who have already had their first dose in Australia.
The woman is believed to have developed thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) some time between having the jab on June 24 and becoming unwell 11 days later on July 5.
The rare condition can cause blood clots and is a side effect of the vaccine.
But of the doses dolled out in Australia, there are just 45 known cases of the condition and an additional 31 'probable' cases.
The woman's death was the first to be linked to the Oxford AstraZeneca virus in South Australia.
She died in Royal Adelaide Hospital overnight after spending several days in intensive care. Three other deaths nationwide are believed to be linked to the jab.
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