Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Health Canada has authorized brand name changes for three COVID-19 vaccines approved for use.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria, Health Canada said in a tweet Thursday.
“These are only name changes. There are no changes to the vaccines themselves,” the agency tweeted.
Pfizer and Moderna say that this change also marks the full approval of their vaccines for those 12 years old and up in Canada, which had been previously approved under an interim approval set to expire Thursday.
"Based on the longer-term follow-up data that we submitted, today's decision by Health Canada affirms the efficacy and safety profile of our vaccine at a time when it is urgently needed,” Fabien Paquette, vaccines lead at Pfizer Canada, said in a press release.
Health Canada told CTV News in an email that when Pfizer and Moderna submitted their vaccines to Health Canada to seek approval under the Food and Drug Regulations following their interim approval, those applications included brand name changes.
The agency added that last March, they amended the Food and Drug Regulations to “provide a mechanism for COVID-19 products to gain permanent legal status,” while maintaining some of the “agile regulatory measures” that came with the interim approval.
“The Department has reviewed all the required data on safety, efficacy, and manufacturing processes for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines,” the agency stated.
The new vaccine names are already being used for promotional purposes in the EU and the United States.
Vials of the vaccines will still contain the terms we are more used to for a period of time in order to minimize confusion.
“Although the vaccine's brand name will be COMIRNATY following this approval, Canada will continue to receive vials of the vaccine labeled as Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine,” Pfizer said in a news release Thursday.
“The formulation for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is the same formulation as COMIRNATY and they are considered interchangeable by Health Canada to provide the COVID-19 vaccination series. Given the current ongoing pandemic, a gradual transition to new labeling with the COMIRNATY brand name will occur at a later date.”
In a separate release, Moderna said it was pleased with Health Canada’s approval of its SpikeVax vaccine.
However, some are worried that these brand names will cause unnecessary confusion, and are saying it’s a little too late to rebrand now. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch shared on Twitter that he doesn’t care what the vaccines are called.
“I’m still going with Pfizer, Moderna & AZ,” he tweeted.
He told CTV News Channel that while he understands needing to have a brand name for the vaccines, some of these new names are difficult to pronounce and sound very different from the names become used to.
“I think we can use the colloquial names,” he said. “We’ve been calling this the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine — I think people will go with what they already know.
“It just seems to be [...] adding more confusion when no confusion needs to be added.”
He said that changing names after months of referring to something as a different name doesn’t make sense.
“The exception to that is when we saw them changing the name of the variants of concern,” he said, explaining that the official name change to Alpha, Delta, etc. actually helped people understand them because the name change took us from a string of letters and numbers (e.g. B.117) to something easier to remember.
“It made things a lot easier for everybody,” he said. “This does the opposite.”
He doesn’t think it will be a problem in the long run, though — likely because people won’t switch over to the new names.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I would imagine we’re not going to hear much of this,” he said. “Maybe we’ll talk about it today and tomorrow, make fun of [the names] but I think people won’t be using those brand names in their day-to-day interactions when they’re talking about these vaccines.”
With files from Sonja Puzic and The Canadian Press.
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that's expected to face legal challenges.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The U.S. Senate has passed US$95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.