WHO announces COVID is still an emergency as Health Canada says Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine has no ‘elevated risk’ of stroke
As RSV and flu cases steadily decline in Canada, the COVID still remains a global health emergency, the World Health Organization chief said Monday, after a key advisory panel found the pandemic may be nearing an “inflexion point” where higher levels of immunity can lower virus-related deaths.
Speaking at the opening of WHO’s annual executive board meeting, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “there is no doubt that we’re in a far better situation now” than a year ago — when the highly transmissible Omicron variant was at its peak.
But Tedros warned that in the last eight weeks, at least 170,000 people have died around the world in connection with the coronavirus. He called for at-risk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing and early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against “misinformation” about the pandemic.
“We remain hopeful that in the coming year, the world will transition to a new phase in which we reduce hospitalizations and deaths to the lowest possible level,” he said.
Tedros’ comments came moments after WHO released findings of its emergency committee on the pandemic which reported that some 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered — with nearly 90% of health workers and more than four in five people over 60 years of age having completed the first series of jabs.
”The committee acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic may be approaching an inflexion point,“ WHO said in a statement. Higher levels of immunity worldwide through vaccination or infection “may limit the impact” of the virus that causes COVID-19 on “morbidity and mortality,” the committee said.
“But there is little doubt that this virus will remain a permanently established pathogen in humans and animals for the foreseeable future,” it said. While Omicron versions are easily spread, “there has been a decoupling between infection and severe disease” compared to that of earlier variants.
Committee members cited “pandemic fatigue“ and the increasing public perception that COVID-19 isn’t as much of a risk as it once was, leading to people to increasingly ignore or disregard health measures like mask-wearing and social distancing.
Ahead of that announcement, one of Canada’s top infectious disease specialists warns that the WHO’s consensus won’t necessarily mean the virus is behind us.
“I think it’s important to point out that this is not about … whether COVID is gone or not,” said Dr. Lisa Barrett, an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology as well as the Department of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University.
“This is a real committee-based decision at the WHO level to decide in whether this is still a public health emergency of international concern,” she said on Sunday.
Barrett noted that the FDA recommended a change to booster shot roll outs.
“They’re suggesting a once-a-year, similar to a flu shot. I think that’s the right approach at this point,” she said.
But recent data from one U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) database has detected a potential stroke risk link in older adults who received an updated Pfizer COVID-19 bivalent shot. However, according to Health Canada (HC) there is currently “no indication” connecting mRNA bivalent vaccines with ischemic strokes.
Ischemic stroke is the most common type of stroke, according to Health Canada’s website. It involves a sudden loss of brain function triggered by a sudden brain blood vessel blockage. This can be caused by a variety of reasons, including smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and high blood cholesterol.
Although Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) “are aware” of the recent announcement on the “possible preliminary COVID-19 vaccine safety signal between the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and strokes in people aged 65 and over,” the agency pointed out that “at this time, the CDC is not recommending any changes to vaccination practices.”
Although Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) “are aware” of the recent announcement on the “possible preliminary COVID-19 vaccine safety signal between the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and strokes in people aged 65 and over,” the agency pointed out that “at this time, the CDC is not recommending any changes to vaccination practices.”
In a statement released on Friday, the agency said that as of Jan. 1, over seven million mRNA bivalent vaccines have been administered in Canada but to date, PHAC or HC “have not observed an elevated risk or any signals for thromboembolic events or vascular events” after the administration of these vaccines.
“Health Canada and PHAC continue to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines approved in Canada to ensure that their benefits continue to outweigh their risks, as is done for all approved vaccines in Canada,” it read.
The agency assured that Canada has a “robust vaccine safety surveillance system in place that engages healthcare professionals, vaccine manufacturers, and the provincial and territorial health authorities.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic emergency nearly three years ago, over 50,000 Canadians have died after contracting COVID-19, PHAC confirmed last week.
As of then, the death toll sat at 50,135.
Quebec is the only province that still reports COVID-19 data daily, which has seen the most confirmed deaths of any jurisdiction with 17,865 fatalities to date. Ontario has the second-highest provincial death toll as of Jan. 20, which sits at 15,786, followed by Alberta at 5,470 deaths as of Jan 18.
This article was reported by the Star and Global News.
