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Editorial

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2020)

75 million syringes but nothing to put in them: what is Canada’s plan for a COVID-19 vaccine?

DOI
https://doi.org/10.26443/mjm.v18i1.187
Submitted
July 22, 2020
Published
2020-08-12

Abstract

The Canadian government recently announced, to much fanfare, that they have begun procuring the supplies that will be essential for mass vaccination against COVID-19, beginning with an agreement for 75 million syringes, alcohol swabs and bandages. This is certainly good news, and it is absolutely worthwhile to think about these possibly overlooked factors needed to effectively vaccinate the population. But what will we vaccinate them with? Dankner and Michell-Robinson argue that in the current political climate, the Canadian Government must act now to invest in securing early vaccine doses from promising trials as well as make long term plans to bolster the Canadian industrial scientific sector in order to avoid future issues with drug development during international crises.

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