Moderna asks Health Canada to approve COVID-19 vaccine booster shot
Global News
Moderna is asking Health Canada to approve a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine.
Moderna has applied for Canadian approval of a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced Tuesday.
This comes as other countries, including the U.S. and Israel, have approved or even required COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for large portions of their population — but experts remain divided on how much it will help.
Moderna says the booster will be necessary.
“We’ve seen this huge emergence of a Delta surge this year and that’s intersecting with many people being almost a year out of their primary vaccination,” Moderna president Stephen Hoge told Global News in a recent interview.
“And what we know is you’ll see waning immunity, decreasing neutralizing titers in the blood of people at about a year. So we do think it’s about time for a booster so that we can get to the highest levels of protection possible given the ongoing surge.”
Health Canada has to review the application and will choose whether to approve the booster shot and under what conditions. There is no timeline for how long this could take.
The booster shot will contain 50 micrograms of active ingredient, the company said – half of what is in the initial two doses. This is in line with the similar request that Moderna has submitted to the U.S. FDA.
Other than being a half-dose, the vaccine will be the same formulation as the original vaccine, Moderna says.
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