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Syringes filled with doses of Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at the vaccination reference center in the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute (EBPI) in Zurich, Switzerland on November 17, 2021.ARND WIEGMANN/Reuters

The first leg of Alberta’s effort to reach vaccine-hesitant residents by offering them one shot of a product made by Janssen Pharmaceuticals has proved successful, although the province is urging those recipients to follow up with a booster from brands they previously shunned.

Alberta Health Services, in a Dec. 17 memo to staff from senior executives, said it administered 80 per cent of its first shipment of 5,000 Janssen shots, adding that another delivery of equal size was on its way. Saskatchewan, which received a smaller Janssen shipment, has delivered about 72 per cent of its original supply.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney asked the federal government in September for 20,000 Janssen doses on the premise that vaccine-hesitant Albertans indicated they would be more inclined to take the single-dose viral-vector vaccine over the messenger RNA shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. (Janssen is wholly owned by Johnson & Johnson.)

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Alberta and Saskatchewan requested the Janssen shots as the crushing fourth wave was drowning their health care systems, largely owing to unvaccinated individuals. But even then – before the highly transmissible Omicron variant had been identified – Alberta said that while someone with one dose of the less-effective Janssen vaccine would be considered fully immunized, recipients should get a messenger RNA shot after five months. Further, the province warned it may later require two doses of Janssen in order to be considered fully vaccinated.

Canada surpassed two million total infections of COVID-19 on Boxing Day – a statistic that under-represents COVID-19′s reach as Omicron rips through the country, given that provincial testing capacity is limited. The tally, for example, excludes the results from rapid tests, which some jurisdictions are relying on in the face of the new variant. Moreover, a handful of provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, stopped releasing data over the holidays.

Provinces are racing to administer booster doses amid Omicron’s severity and its ability to evade protection provided by previous shots. Parker Vandermeer, a physician in rural Alberta, said it is likely Janssen recipients will have to receive a messenger RNA booster, especially as vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna solidify their status as the most effective options.

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“The immune response that you get from [Janssen], it is not nothing. It does give you some immunity,” he said. “But it is just not to the degree of the other vaccines. There’s a reason we didn’t bring much of it into Canada.”

The Janssen vaccine is 67 per cent to 72 per cent effective at preventing infection, according to the information sheet Alberta released in November. By way of comparison, Alberta noted two doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca, another viral-vector vaccine, provided 89 per cent protection; and two shots of messenger RNA vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna offered 89 per cent to 91 per cent protection. Omicron, however, has eroded this effectiveness.

In Alberta, men received 62 per cent of the 4,000 Janssen doses administered in the province, according to statistics provided by the provincial Health Department. Roughly 69 per cent of the Janssen shots went to people between the ages of 18 and 49, while the remaining 31 per cent were over 50, Alberta Health said.

The Janssen vaccine was not widely available, given short supply and limited demand. About 42 per cent of the doses administered in Alberta were in the Calgary health zone; 23 per cent in the Edmonton region; 15 per cent in the central zone; 13 per cent in the north; and 7 per cent in the province’s south, the government said. It would not provide a breakdown of where recipients lived, rather than where they received the dose, citing privacy concerns.

Saskatchewan data indicate it delivered 1,805 Janssen doses as of Dec. 28, after receiving 2,500 of the shots in the middle of November. That means the province delivered about 72 per cent of its original Janssen supply.

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