AHN Staff
Ottawa, Ontario (AHN) - With the federal government of Canada looking ill-prepared for the second round of Influenza A (H1N1) pandemic, Ottawa is now considering contracting more than one supplier when the next big pandemic hits the country.
An unexpected surge in number of Canadians seeking H1N1 immunization had provinces scrambling for solutions on how to meet the high demand for inoculation that federal officials are now open to distributing the job of manufacturing vaccines in the future to more than one pharmaceutical firm.
Ottawa ordered 50 million doses of the adjuvanted swine flu vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline after it was burned from a 1976 decision to order swine flu vaccines from a foreign pharmaceutical firm, which never delivered the doses.
One solution adopted by Alberta is to close all immunization clinics because of the surge in demand for vaccines even among residents outside the high-risk group. The sudden closure of the vaccine clinics was criticized by a Calgary-based pandemic expert as a case of mismanaged logistics and poor communications.
Dr. Pat Pitsel pointed out that since young children are among the high-risk groups, vaccine clinics should have been established in schools and in work places of first responders. She forecast a third H1N1 pandemic wave which could bring a more fatal, mutated strain.
Other Canadian cities used hospital bracelets and numbered tickets to control the entry of residents seeking inoculation in vaccine clinics.
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