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- Page navigation anchor for Canada's National Vaccine Registry: New potential benefitsCanada's National Vaccine Registry: New potential benefits
Canada continues to lack a centralized tracking system for COVID-19 vaccines. Instead, reliance is placed on a patchwork of provincial and territorial systems unable to communicate with Health Canada or with one another (1).
Health Canada lacks vital information about population-specific vaccination rates that a National Vaccine Registry (NVR) would provide. As a direct result, the Public Health Agency of Canada can neither compare the relative effectiveness of vaccines in different populations nor evaluate how effective each vaccine is against specific emerging variants.
A NVR would provide real-time insight into vaccine effectiveness that would prove critical to a more rapid return to normalcy. The added knowledge would enable a more agile and nuanced response to this and future outbreaks based on real-world, Canadian-specific data. This information is especially crucial when vaccine supply is limited.Health Canada is currently effectively siloed from the reporting on adverse events collected by the provinces and territories (2). A robust NVR would also serve as a Canada-wide repository of rare adverse events. The safety of vaccines within Canada’s diverse populations is best understood from data mined directly from Canada’s provinces and territories rather than relying on data mainly collected outside Canada.
Finally, combining provincial and territorial data to form a robust NVR would enable the National Advisory Committee on Immuniza...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: I.G. has received numerous grants from pharmaceutical companies and the National Institute of Health while participating in over 50 clinical research trials. She has served as co-chair of the Advisory Board for Shingrix (GSK Canada) and educational grants for lectures on adult vaccination. J.L. received payments for being on a panel at the American Diabetes Association, for talks at the Toronto Reference Library, for writing a brief in an action for side effects of a drug for Michael F.Smith, Lawyer and a second brief on teh role of promotion in generating prescriptions for Goodmans LLP and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for presenting at a workshop on conflict-of-interest in clinical practice guidelines. He is currently a member of research groups that are receiving money from the Canadian Institutes of health Research and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a member of the Foundation Board of Health Action International and the Board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. He receives royalties from University of Toronto Press and James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. for books he has written.References
- Diana Duong. Canadian physicians frustrated with vaccine rollout. CMAJ 2021;193:E458-E459.
- 1. Vaccination coverage in Canada: Government of Canada; 2019. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/immunization-vaccines/vaccination-coverage.html
- 2. Canada’s Health Care System: Government of Canada; 2019. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-care-system/reports-publications/health-care-system/canada.html
- 3. Ling, J. Provinces are working with outdated vaccine tracking systems, hindering national data, Globe and Mail, Feb. 21, 2021. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-provinces-working-with-outdated-vaccine-tracking-systems/
- 4. An audit of the Panorama public health system, Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia, Aug 2015. https://www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/reports/OAGBC_PanoramaReport_FINAL.pdf