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Canada’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force needs better transparency about potential conflicts of interest

Hopefully there will soon be a vaccine for COVID-19. In fact, there may be more than one. Once there is, Canada will probably spend hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, on the vaccine or vaccines.



Samples from volunteers are handled in the laboratory at Imperial College in London, on July 30, 2020. Imperial College is working on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

© (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Samples from volunteers are handled in the laboratory at Imperial College in London, on July 30, 2020. Imperial College is working on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In August, the federal government signed deals with two United States vaccines producers, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson, to purchase tens of millions of doses of their vaccines should they prove to be successful. In September, further deals were concluded with Pfizer, Moderna, GlaxoSmithKline/Sanofi and AstraZeneca.

Public acceptance of any vaccine will depend on how confident the public is that the best decisions have been made about which vaccines to ultimately use. If it looks like decisions are based on advice

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Medicine
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Coronavirus vaccine: Health officials worry nation not ready for COVID-19 vaccine

Millions of Americans are counting on a COVID-19 vaccine to curb the global pandemic and return life to normal.

While one or more options could be available toward the end of this year or early next, the path to delivering vaccines to 330 million people remains unclear for the local health officials expected to carry out the work.

“We haven’t gotten a lot of information about how this is going to roll out,” said Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of Texas’ Harris County Public Health department, which includes Houston.

In a four-page memo this summer, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told health departments across the country to draft vaccination plans by Oct. 1 “to coincide with the earliest possible release of COVID-19 vaccine.”

But health departments that have been underfunded for decades say they currently lack the staff, money and tools to educate people about vaccines and

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Dentist
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‘A day of hope.’ Pence visits Miami for launch of COVID vaccine trial.

With President Donald Trump’s poll numbers flagging in Florida and the state continuing to struggle with one of the nation’s highest rates of new COVID-19 cases, Vice President Mike Pence visited the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine on Monday to focus attention on one of the pandemic’s few potential bright spots: the rapid development of a vaccine against the disease.

Noting the president’s emphasis on speed, Pence said the federal government has positioned itself through public-private collaborations with drug makers to ramp up mass production of a vaccine at the first sign of its safety and effectiveness.

“We’re actually having these companies produce the vaccines as we speak, and as soon as they’re confirmed to be safe and effective we’ll have tens of millions of doses ready to distribute across the country,” Pence said, after he met with doctors and researchers at UM’s medical campus in downtown

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Medicine
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Northwestern Wants 5,000 Volunteers For COVID-19 Vaccine Trials

CHICAGO — Northwestern Medicine is looking for 5,000 people at risk for contracting coronavirus to sign up for clinical trials aimed at preventing the spread of the virus.

The clinical trials run by Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine are seeking people at least 18 years old working in jobs that put them at an increased risk for contracting coronavirus including health care workers, grocery and retail store employees, public transportation employees and factory workers. The registry is also seeking volunteers from racial and ethic groups disproportionately affected by COVID-19 including African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic people with underlying health conditions.

“We want to recruit participants in the Chicago area who are at risk for exposure to COVID-19 and who are potentially interested in participating in different studies for prevention of the infection,” Dr. Karen Krueger, the principle investigator of the registry, said in a statement.

“We are casting a

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Medicine
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GOP senators consider $600 extension; US orders 100 million vaccine doses from Pfizer; California cases top NY

The U.S. government has placed an initial order for 100 million doses of a vaccine candidate being developed by Pfizer and a German firm, BioNTech, for $1.95 billion, the companies announced Wednesday.

The U.S. can acquire up to 500 million additional doses, the statement said.

Meanwhile, federal unemployment benefits are taking a hit at a time when more states are abruptly pausing their reopening plans. The $600 weekly jobless benefits bonus, approved in March, is about to expire and likely won’t be extended or replaced before next month.

The U.S. has been averaging more than 60,000 new cases daily for multiple weeks, and hospitalizations have climbed to totals not seen in three months. A USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins data through late Tuesday shows 10 states set seven-day records for new cases while five states had a record number of deaths over the period.

📈 Today’s stats: The U.S.

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Health
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Pfizer hopes for October vaccine OK as US orders 100M doses; CDC director ‘absolutely’ wants grandkids back in school

The U.S. government has placed an initial order for 100 million doses of a vaccine candidate being developed by Pfizer and a German firm, BioNTech, for $1.95 billion, the companies announced Wednesday.

The U.S. can acquire up to 500 million additional doses, the statement said.

Meanwhile, federal unemployment benefits are taking a hit at a time when more states are abruptly pausing their reopening plans. The $600 weekly jobless benefits bonus, approved in March, is about to expire and likely won’t be extended or replaced before next month.

The U.S. has been averaging more than 60,000 new cases daily for multiple weeks, and some states are seeing hospitalization rates soar. A USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins data through late Tuesday shows 10 states set seven-day records for new cases while five states had a record number of deaths over the period.

📈 Today’s stats: The U.S. has more than

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Health
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Government signs new vaccine deals for 90 million doses

Pfizer covid vaccine - Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Pfizer covid vaccine – Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter ..
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter ..

The Government says it has secured an agreement for 30 million doses of a vaccine being developed – and currently at phase two trials – by BioNTech and German firm Pfizer.

There has also been an in-principle deal done for 60 million doses of a vaccine that is being developed by France’s Valneva.

The figure of 90 million is in addition to the 100 million doses of vaccine that are being developed by Oxford University in partnership with AstraZeneca.

But the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce has insisted that the Government is “not pursuing a strategy of vaccine nationalism”.

 Kate Bingham said the UK’s goal was “to find vaccines for the UK, but also to ensure that any successful vaccine is distributed across the globe, so that anybody who is at risk of infection is

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Medicine
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‘I love the Americans, I don’t want them up here,’ Ford says, vaccine may not be available until 2021

Yahoo News Canada is committed to providing our readers with the most accurate and recent information on all things coronavirus. We know things change quickly, including some possible information in this story. For the latest on COVID-19, we encourage our readers to consult online resources like Canada’s public health website, World Health Organization, as well as our own Yahoo Canada homepage.

As cases of COVID-19 continue to spread around the world, Canadians seem to be increasingly concerned about their health and safety

Currently, there are more than 108,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Canada and nearly 8,800 deaths.

Check back for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak in Canada.

For a full archive of the first month of the pandemic, please check our archive of events.

July 14

2:00 p.m.: ‘I don’t want them up here right now’

At a press conference on Tuesday, Ontario Premier Doug

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Health
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We won’t immediately have a ‘perfect vaccine,’ and it is ‘not realistic’ to expect the virus will soon be eliminated

President Donald Trump wears a mask as he walks down the hallway during his visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Saturday, July 11, 2020.
President Donald Trump wears a mask as he walks down the hallway during his visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Saturday, July 11, 2020.

Associated Press/Patrick Semansky

  • The World Health Organization warned Monday that any coronavirus vaccine will likely not be “perfect,” in part because not “everyone will have access” to it right away.

  • The WHO stressed that other time-tested public health measures: handwashing, social distancing, quarantining, and wearing masks in public, can all help tamp down the spread of the virus in the meantime.

  • “Turn and face the problem and accept that it’s going to take time,” the WHO’s Mike Ryan said. “It’s going to require a huge commitment on the part of government and individuals in a number of countries to turn this around.” 

  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A coronavirus vaccine is still many months away, but leading infectious disease

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Medicine
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Social distancing won’t stop until there’s a vaccine, B.C. health officials say

Yahoo News Canada is committed to providing our readers with the most accurate and recent information on all things coronavirus. We know things change quickly, including some possible information in this story. For the latest on COVID-19, we encourage our readers to consult online resources like Canada’s public health website, World Health Organization, as well as our own Yahoo Canada homepage.

As cases of COVID-19 continue to spread around the world, Canadians seem to be increasingly concerned about their health and safety

Currently, there are more than 106,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Canada and more than 8,700 deaths.

Check back for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak in Canada.

For a full archive of the first month of the pandemic, please check our archive of events.

July 9

7:15 p.m.: COVID-19 polls of the day

7:00 p.m.: B.C.’s top doctor says some public health measures will

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Health