OTTAWA — As Canada confronts climbing COVID-19 case counts, rising hospitalizations and employee shortages, there’s one measure some consultants say might stave off a worsening disaster: emergency approval of Pfizer’s oral antiviral capsule.
As all Canadians have notice, Trudeau has been a massive failure when it comes to COVID-19 with a lazy obsession with vaccination and booters with no other options. Early treatment has been taboo and you’re labeled a antivaxxer or a conspiracy theorist if you ask about early treatment.
Early treatment is one thing the Canadian media has also overlooked just to fuel more clickbait left leaning articles littered with us vs them, the vaccicated vs the unvaccined rhetoric driving a wedge in to our society.
The Canadian media and Trudeau need a reality check. 80.08% of the Canadian population over the age of 5 is double vaccinated. A majority of the COVID cases are “fully vaccinated” people and hospitalizations are pretty much split equally.
The drug, known as Paxlovid, was approved in the United States and South Korea for emergency use in late December. A few days later, regulators in the United Kingdom also gave it the go ahead for emergency use after completing a “rigorous” review of its effectiveness.
But the drug is still pending approval in Canada.
A request for the antiviral was submitted to Health Canada on December 1, 2021. TheStar says they were told “while all COVID-19 filings are processed on an expedited schedule, the regulator does not plan to further expedite its ongoing review. Regular drug approval in Canada can take several months to two years.”
TheStar quotes Health Canada as saying “Health Canada will only authorize the use of antiviral treatments if comprehensive, independent scientific review of all data included in the submissions shows that the benefits of the treatments outweigh the potential risks,” the statement read.”
TheStar goes on to high light how the drug works to help prevent further illness “Paxlovid works primarily by preventing the virus that causes COVID-19 from replicating and invading healthy cells”
The approving of drugs is in the jurisdiction of Health Canada, not politicians. This means one of the people in charge of approving the drugs is Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos
Just the other we reported on Jean-Yves Duclos looking for support to mandate forced vaccinations across Canada. Read more on Compulsory vaccination for everyone likely coming soon to Canada, says federal health minister
“I’ll have more to say about (antiviral drugs) and about Health Canada’s approval process in the coming weeks,” Duclos told reporters at a news conference.
“We project that this wave will peak in early February. Obviously yesterday we needed access to this drug, “Smith told Meczyki.
“It’s just part of the arsenal of tackling Omicron. I don’t want Canada to be at a disadvantage relative to our American, British, Korean and other colleagues who use the drug safely and bend the curve for hospitalization and critical illness. “
During a Pfizer clinical trial they found adults not hospitalized with COVID-19 “found that the drug was 89 percent effective in reducing hospitalizations and deaths compared to patients who received a placebo.”
Health Canada claims they have 1 million courses of treatment on order. The orders consist of up to 500,000 cycles of the Merck brand oral treatment and Molnupiravir, with options for up to 500,000 more cycles of the drug yet to be approved. In December 2021 he US Food and Drug Administration granted emergency approval to Molnupiravir.
“If you are vaccinated and following public health measures, and you still contract this disease, which is easy to do these days, and at the first sign of symptoms you take this medication, I will most likely stay home for Five days, I will take my pills and in the end I will be fine and will be able to rejoin civil society, ”Smith said.
He said the drug would get essential workers back to work more quickly and reduce pressure on the health care system.
Smith is now calling for greater transparency from the federal government in knowing what is causing the delay, given approvals of the drug in other jurisdictions.
“What do you still need that the United Kingdom and the United States did not require?” Smith said.
It’s nice this option is being floated but it is a little frustrating not knowing what this other “data” they are waiting for to be submitted that was not already submitted to the UK and United States. Health Canada failed to answer the question asked by TheStar.
With the approval of this drug pending with Health Canada why is Health Canada pushing so hard for more lock downs and mandatory vaccination for everyone in the country?
Reported by TheStar here. We would like to thank TheStar you for reporting on early treatment medicine for COVID-19, this is important for society.
The Reporter behind the story: Raisa Patel is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for Meczyki.
