by Henry Tempelman, Pharmacist/Owner Kakabeka & Rosslyn IDA Pharmacies
Welcome 2021! We’ve been patiently… or let me correct that.. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival to bring us closer to the normal sense of reality and freedom that we so dearly miss from pre-Covid times. We have all experienced a different type of lifestyle in the past year and I hope that there were some highlights and memories that you are able to reflect on in a challenging year.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, lead physician and expert on America’s COVID taskforce, has recently said that the US can return to normal if the vaccine rollout is efficient and diligent. There are differing opinions on the timeline for “return to normal”, but most can agree that mass vaccination is a huge step in the right direction.
Now, at the time of writing, it has been frustrating to see the poor execution of the rollout of vaccination for the public in Canada. Studies show that the vaccines are more effective in preventing COVID-19 infections once administered to humans instead of staying locked in freezers. This would be a funnier joke if there was a better plan to get these vaccines in Canadians’ arms. Hopefully by the team you’re reading this there is some progress.
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about when we will start administering the COVID vaccine in our pharmacies. We are eager to help with vaccinating the public, but we have not yet received any direction from the Ministry of Health with respect to timelines or protocols for vaccine rollout in pharmacies. I anticipate that perhaps pharmacists will be involved once more vaccine stock is shipped to Canada; initial vaccine rollout will likely be more tightly regulated for frontline workers and long-term care residents. There is also some physical distribution challenges as the vaccines need to be kept at extremely cold temperatures.
People have had questions about the safety of the vaccine, citing concern that it all happened too fast to be safe. When the vaccine is offered to me, will I get it? Absolutely! And I will likely recommend it for you too.
Canada has approved the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine, with the likelihood that more COVID vaccines will be approved in the future as they check the right boxes. How do these vaccines work? Past vaccines, like the flu vaccine, use a live, but weakened/inactivated virus. The COVID vaccine doesn’t actually contain the COVID virus; the COVID vaccine contains mRNA, which essentially is a memory cell that, once exposed to the vaccine, will help your immune system remember how to fight the COVID virus if you were to be infected with it. Once you get the COVID vaccine your body basically has the instructions how to fight and eliminate the infecting virus quickly and effectively, rather than starting from scratch to figure out how to fight the virus while you’re infected and the virus is racing to spread throughout your body. Complicated? The science might be, but luckily all we have to do is roll up our sleeves once it’s offered!
Should we be concerned about it being new? No, this technology isn’t entirely new and has been studied in cancer research. Should we be concerned about the speed at which it was developed? Didn’t they cut corners to get it approved quickly? No and no. The reasons vaccines generally take so long to get developed is that there is so much red tape. Think of the pile of trial applications that sit on the desk of Health Canada/FDA to be approved. Instead of waiting months for their trial applications to make it to the top of the pile, the COVID vaccine trials had priority treatment and was addressed as a priority. Also, Chinese scientists had already provided us with the genetic code of the virus in January, months before COVID even reached our city. Less red tape, more technology and funding to give them a head start.
Between the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, they were tested in about 37,000 people (and an additional 37,000 people received placebo). This is comparable with testing populations for other vaccines, and the trials didn’t have to wait months to recruit people as people lining up to try the vaccine in the middle of a pandemic.
What about side effects? How do we know there aren’t bad side effects down the road we don’t know about? Decades of vaccine research shows us that side effects generally occur quickly after receiving doses, from days to weeks following the dose. I’m not concerned about side effects from the vaccine in the slightest. I’m more concerned about the long-term effects that they’ve seen from COVID infections such as long-term lung damage.
The more people that get vaccinated the sooner we will return to normal. I will be rolling up my sleeve at first opportunity and I encourage everyone else to as well. Do it for you and do it for your community. Hopefully I’ll see you in a socially-distanced line soon as we wait with our sleeves rolled up!
