Arab Canada News
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Published: September 1, 2022
Health officials are expected to issue an announcement about the ongoing battle against COVID-19 today as regional health systems eagerly await approval for a vaccine targeting the Omicron variant of the virus. The vaccines currently available in Canada only target the original strain of COVID-19.
The new vaccines under review by Health Canada, called bivalent vaccines, are designed to recognize specific mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron BA.1 variant.
The UK approved Moderna's bivalent vaccine two weeks ago, and the US Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to Omicron vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech earlier this week.
Canada has already purchased 12 million doses of Moderna's version of the Omicron vaccine, which includes converting some existing orders of the original Moderna vaccine so that the newly modified version will be delivered instead.
Health officials held a technical briefing this morning, and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos is expected to speak about the importance of getting a booster dose this afternoon.
Duclos has already indicated that rapid vaccine rollout will be important to stave off a potential large new wave of infections in the fall.
The Omicron variant arrived in Canada in late 2021 and has spread widely since then.
Omicron subvariants are now by far the most common strains of the virus.
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