TORONTO -- One young woman who received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is stuck in limbo, waiting to find out what will happen with her second dose, now that health authorities have pressed pause on administering that vaccine to those under age 55.
The 21-year-old Toronto-area resident received her first dose of AstraZeneca from a pharmacy. She said she was able to get the vaccine because the pharmacy had extras.
“I was told by this very government that it was safe, effective, and to take the first vaccine I could get,” Emma Hoffer-Weinper told CTVNews.ca in an email on Wednesday.
She received her first dose on March 17. Less than two weeks later, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended immediately halting use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in people under age 55.
Most provinces were rolling out the AstraZeneca vaccine in older populations, so the number of people under 55 who received a dose of the vaccine is believed to be low.
“There is no information on what to do for us under 55 who have received this vaccine. The number who received it is small, insignificant to many. But we exist,” Hoffer-Weinper added.
She said she feels misled, having initially been told that the vaccine was safe, and the push for everyone to take the first one available to them.
“Be transparent or don’t offer vaccines. We didn’t sign up for a vaccine to be a trial study, we signed up for one that is safe and effective,” she said.
As for next steps, nothing is yet set in stone, but there are two options being considered.
According to Dr. Caroline Quach, chair of NACI, either the AstraZeneca vaccinations will resume in that age group or they will be paused permanently.
“If that is the case, the [second] dose is not due before at least 12 weeks (on label for AZ) and we will have, by then, results from the mixed schedule study that is currently done in the UK where participants are receiving AZ followed by the Pfizer vaccine. This study started recruitment on February 1st,” she told CTVNews.ca in an email on Thursday.
She said at this time, the pause is temporary while Health Canada conducts its enquiry. That doesn’t give people like Hoffer-Weinper a definitive answer. She’ll have to wait to see if Health Canada resumes vaccinations in her age group or pauses indefinitely– and if it's the latter, what happens next will depend on the British study’s outcome.
While Hoffer-Weinper said she’s had no adverse reactions, she regrets having gotten the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the toll it’s taken on her anxiety.
“It’s in the back of my head every single day that I read the word ‘Pfizer’ or ‘vaccine,’” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Thursday.
She worries that the confusion over the AstraZeneca vaccine will cause further vaccine hesitancy, especially given the difficulty she had in finding an answer.
“Not everyone wants to research and not everyone knows how to research,” she said. “I spent four years in university and I can't find information on this, but I can't even begin to imagine the fear and hesitancy that people will get if they don't want to, or know how to do that.”
Knowing that she’ll have an answer sooner rather than later has given her some relief, but she wishes she had been told sooner, especially since there seem to be so few people under age 55 who got a dose of AstraZeneca.
“They could have just called us and said ‘don't worry we're working on it’, any kind of reassurance, even if they don't have all the answers,” she said. “Communication is key, I think more so than the actual concrete answers.”
Despite all of the stress and anxiety, she says she hasn’t lost faith in vaccines.
“I think that the vaccines are one of the greatest scientific gifts that we'll have in our generation,”she said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMihQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5jdHZuZXdzLmNhL2hlYWx0aC9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy93aGF0LWRvZXMtdGhlLWFzdHJhemVuZWNhLXBhdXNlLW1lYW4tZm9yLXlvdW5nLWNhbmFkaWFucy13aG8tYWxyZWFkeS1nb3Qtb25lLWRvc2UtMS41MzcxNTcz0gFEaHR0cHM6Ly9iZXRhLmN0dm5ld3MuY2EvbmF0aW9uYWwvY29yb25hdmlydXMvMjAyMS80LzEvMV81MzcxNTczLmh0bWw?oc=5
2021-04-01 17:32:00Z
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