The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that every Canadian who wants to have a vaccine will have one before September. My understanding is that it's based solely on existing contracts that we have with Moderna and Pfizer. However, there are three other vaccines that are currently waiting for approval in Canada. Two of those have completed phase three trials and shown effectiveness. Although AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson might not have, in the original trials, shown 95% efficacy like Moderna and Pfizer, they weren't in head-to-head trials with those other vaccines. There were different populations and different amounts of variance.
In addition, it seems that with further boosters, you can increase the efficacy of pretty well all vaccines. Johnson & Johnson has only one. Their result was with one shot. In addition, although Johnson & Johnson was effective at preventing only 70% of people getting COVID, it decreased the number of admissions to hospital and deaths 100%. These vaccines seem to me to be very likely to be approved. The results of these studies are public and have been much scrutinized by the medical community. I know that we have to wait for the completion of the regulatory process, but it seems to me that Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are very likely to be approved. AstraZeneca has already been approved in some jurisdictions. If preliminary results from Novavax hold, then we have a fifth vaccine.
I understand our reluctance to count our chickens before they hatch. However, again, it seems very likely that probably all three of these vaccines will be approved. Canada's bought millions of doses of these vaccines. Given this, it would seem to me that our promise to have every Canadian who wants to be vaccinated before September is very conservative—in the sense of a prediction, not in the sense of a party.
I know that we rightly don't want to make promises we can't keep, but there's a great deal of COVID fatigue out there. That's resulted in real health problems. People are unhappy. They're despondent. They're drinking too much. They're overdosing. They're ignoring public health advice because they don't see an end in sight. I would assume that our government has some prediction on vaccination rates and timelines if the other vaccines are approved. Would you be willing to share this with us?
That's to anyone who might want to answer that quick question. I don't think we should promise anybody anything, but I think Canadians really want hope. From what I'm hearing, that September timeline seems very conservative.