The first COVID-19 vaccine received Canada's approval. Health Canada's officials confirmed this decision on Thursday, Feb. 24.
"After a thorough and independent scientific review of the evidence, the Department has determined that the vaccine meets Health Canada's stringent safety," said the Canadian government via its official press release.
Officials added that the plant-based vaccine also meets other requirements, such as quality and efficacy. They further explained that although there are still potential risks, the benefits of the new COVID-19 medicine outweigh most of them.
First Plant-Based COVID-19 Vaccine
According to Web MD's latest report, the new vaccine called COVIFENZ was developed by GlaxoSmithKline, a British multinational pharmaceutical company located in London, England.
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GlaxoSmithKline works with Medicago, a Canadian drugmaker. Medicago said they would start manufacturing the new plant-based vaccine this spring.
Briand Ward, Medicago's current medical officer, said that they want to produce around 76 million doses of the new vaccine to the Canadian government.
He added that around 20 million doses are estimated to be shipped before 2022 ends.
COVIFENZ' Efficacy and Other Details
Before Canada said yes to the new plant-based vaccine, a study involving around 24,000 adult participants was conducted.
The research revealed that the new COVIFENZ has an efficiency of 75% against the rising Delta variant. But, since the study was completed before Omicron was identified, the efficacy of this new medicine against the new strain is still unknown.
Although this is the case, COVIFENZ still has an overall efficiency of 71% against other COVID-19 variants.
Since this is a new vaccine, COVIFENZ is expected to be administered like Pfizer and other vaccines. This means that people will be required to have two shots to be fully vaccinated.
Further studies are needed to know if booster shots are applicable to the new plant-based vaccine.
In other news, a recent study revealed that COVID-19 face masks contain titanium dioxide particles that can cause cancer.
Meanwhile, DNA privacy concerns arose after CDC admitted that 10% of the COVID-19 swab test results are sent to genome sequencing laboratories.
For more news updates about the COVID-19 vaccine and other related health topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.
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Written by: Griffin Davis
