Sask. lowers age restriction on AstraZeneca vaccine to 40

Saskatchewan is making AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine available to more people.

The Ministry of Health announced Tuesday it was lowering the age restriction on the vaccine to 40 years old from 55. The governments of Alberta, B.C., Manitoba and Ontario already have made that move.

However, the Saskatchewan government said there are currently fewer than 15,000 doses of the vaccine in the province and fewer than 9,000 are available to the Saskatchewan Health Authority. The rest have already been allocated to be administered.

On Feb. 26, Health Canada approved AstraZeneca for use on everyone aged 18 and over, but the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended March 29 that the vaccine should only be given to people 55 and over due to concerns over blood clots.

Facing rising case numbers, however, provinces now are eager to get more people vaccinated quicker — so the NACI recommendation is being overlooked.

Saskatchewan was using AstraZeneca at some of its drive-through clinics, but it shifted to Pfizer due to the 55-and-over barrier on AstraZeneca.

The government then started putting AstraZeneca into its mass immunization clinics, which disappointed some recipients who had concerns about that vaccine.

However, doctors and health officials across the province have continually said AstraZeneca doses are safe and keep recommending that people get immunized with the first vaccine made available to them.

Tom McMillan, a spokesman for Alberta Health, told The Canadian Press on Monday that province’s decision to offer the AstraZeneca vaccine to younger people was based on health data along with concerns that vaccine hesitancy in older groups would slow the rollout.

“By opening up to 40, we are balancing the evidence around safety as well as the goal of getting doses into people’s arms as quickly as possible,” McMillan said.

He said the decision would mean hundreds of thousands more Albertans have a chance to be vaccinated more quickly.

In Ontario, phones were buzzing with calls from people eager to get the shot, according to the head of the Ontario Pharmacists Association.

“They were getting calls so it seems to me that there is still a lot of demand,” said Justin Bates, the organization’s CEO.

— With files from The Canadian Press