Public officials yap, Canada falls further behind in per capita vaccinations

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to inform you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #169 (In numerology, 169 connotes intuition, psychic powers, and higher purpose.)

⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 03/05: 115,618,088*

⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 03/05: 2,569,422*

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 03/05: 883,815*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 03/05: 22,152*

⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 03/05: 2,169,417*

March 5, 2021—Good Friday morning, all of you faithful CurveFlatteners. It’s Editorial Director Allan Ryan bringing you today’s Covid update, direct from the heart of Ontario’s Niagara peninsula, hard by the old Welland Canal.

So, how are your systolic and diastolic numbers? Do you feel your blood pressure rise every time you hear the same soothing words and flowery phrases repeated ad nauseum by government officials? Generalities about how everyone who wants a Covid vaccine will be vaccinated by the end of September, how we’re all in this together, how the elderly deserve to be protected. All this yap, while the vaccine supply remains insufficient. Simultaneously, public officials continue to figure the no-travel advisory does not apply to them, and while the virus continues to infect long-term care homes across the country. 

Only now—nearly three months after the first vaccine was made available in Canada—are there concrete plans to roll out vaccination programs. That’s (slow) progress, but let’s take a closer look at Canada’s standing in the world vaccine administration sweepstakes. You only have to look at the statistics to determine that Canada should be branded with a failing grade. 

According to the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data tabulation, Canada now ranks about 40th globally in per capita vaccinations.

The latest information available on Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker indicates that Canada’s rate of vaccination is 5.52 doses per 100 population. How poor is that? Certainly poor compared to Israel’s exceptional rate of 92.46 vaccinations per 100 citizens, or even the U.K.’s rate of 32.25 per 100. But Canada’s vaccination rate also lags behind Serbia (21.98), Chile (19.71), and Turkey (11.34). Despite the sunny predictions and soothing platitudes emanating from the various government leaders, Canada is barely outperforming Brazil (4.56), where the virus has killed over 250,000 people.

More on Brazil: The spread of the virus in Brazil has been called a global threat by a Duke University neuroscientist. Dr. Miguel Nicolelis says the international community should challenge Brazil over its failure to control the pandemic since the world may be dealing with more Covid variants likely to emerge from the country. According to the report in The Guardian, Dr. Nicolelis said, “Brazil is an open-air laboratory for the virus to proliferate and eventually create more lethal mutations . . . This is about the world. It’s global.”

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Dr. Bettina Hamelin, President and CEO of Ontario Genomics. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. Next week, we welcome Paul Petrelli of Jazz Pharmaceuticals. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 03/05/2021

• A new study in JAMA Cardiology examined the prevalence of inflammatory heart disease among professional athletes who had Covid-19 and then received return-to-play cardiac screening. The study of 789 professional athletes from the major sports leagues revealed only five athletes (0.6%) where imaging showed evidence of inflammatory heart disease that resulted in a restriction from play.
  
  
• The U.S. National Institutes of Health has recognized the importance of research into ‘long-Covid’ and announced the investment of US$1.15 billion over four years to fund investigations of the condition. “Other than the general consensus that the phenomenon is real, all we really know are the questions,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who is leading one project studying the long-lasting effects from Covid-19.
  
  
• According to a report in the journal Blood Advances, people with blood type A may be more susceptible to contracting Covid-19. The laboratory research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston determined that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is more attracted to the blood group A antigen found in respiratory cells, but not the type B or O blood groups.

TODAY CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON 

The Chronicle team is working with educational co-chairs Dr. Rachel Asiniwasis and Dr. Gary Sibbald on the upcoming Indigenous Skin Spectrum Summit (ISSS), scheduled for March 18 and 20. The ISSS is a special session brought to you by the team behind the successful Skin Spectrum Summit, which is in its seventh year. You can learn more about the Summit here. 

RIGHT NOW I'M LISTENING TO... 

A surprising find, really. I helped my 10-year-old niece with some research on cardiac transplantation, and up popped a certain Dr. Suzie Brown. She’s a part-time cardiologist in Nashville, Tenn., who also happens to be a singer/songwriter with three albums to her credit. The music's quality is one thing, but you have to have admiration for someone who can balance two very different, demanding professions.

UNTIL NEXT WEEK

The CurveFlattener will be back next Thursday with publisher Mitch Shannon with some new Covid news. On Monday, watch for the Skin Spectrum Weekly e-newsletter, and on Tuesday, the NPC Healthbiz Weekly will be distributed. Wednesday is a mid-week doubleheader, with the latest NPC Podcast release and the new CJMC Fortnightly. Until then, enjoy your weekend.