Updated Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine now available in N.B., doses for children expected next week
CBC
The updated Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines for people aged 12 and older are available in New Brunswick now and the doses for younger children are expected to arrive next week, according to the Department of Health.
About 22,000 New Brunswickers have rolled up their sleeves to receive a dose of Moderna's updated COVID-19 vaccine since it became available Oct. 16, said spokesperson Sean Hatchard.
Pfizer's Comirnaty and Moderna's Spikevax are both designed to target the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5, but evidence shows they also provide strong protection against other circulating strains, such as EG.5.
Demand for the updated vaccines has been strong, said Brian Greenfield, a pharmacist and co-owner of Guardian Ross Drug in Fredericton.
"I think, just from feedback from some of the patients coming in, it's just there seems to be a lot of COVID going around right now. So I think it just feels like it's time to bump up that protection level again a little bit," he said.
New Brunswick's COVID-19 hazard index has more than doubled in a week and is now the highest in the country, according to an infectious diseases researcher and co-founder of COVID-19 Resources Canada.
The province's score jumped to 22.8, as of Monday, with an estimated one in 10 people currently infected, Tara Moriarty posted on social media. The national average is 21.2, with an estimated one in 19 Canadians infected.
New Brunswick also recorded three more COVID deaths between Oct. 8 and Oct. 14, along with 57 hospitalizations and more than 150 new PCR-confirmed cases. There are also 14 lab-confirmed outbreaks, according to Tuesday's Respiratory Watch report.
The updated vaccines are available to everyone six months and older, as long as it's been at least six months since their last dose or COVID infection.
Greenfield estimates his pharmacy's three Fredericton locations each administered between 60 and 80 of Moderna's updated Spikevax vaccines in the past week.
"It's been interesting. Like, we didn't order enough for the first week simply because the demand was higher than we had anticipated it was going to be," he said. "But we're catching up now."
"We weren't short," he said. "We just … could have done more, and we had to really watch our inventory that first week to make sure that we weren't … booking more than [the] vaccine that we had in."
His pharmacies are seeing a broad range of people, he said, not just those considered most at-risk.
Most people seem happy to get either Moderna or Pfizer, according to Greenfield.
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