Canada recommends AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for seniors

Canadian officials and experts have sought to assure the vaccine is safe, even as several countries have paused its use.

Canada has recommended the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for people aged above 65 in a pivot from its original guidelines. The government’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization had previously recommended that people above 65 should not receive the vaccine “due to limited information on its efficacy”. However, that recommendation was based on early clinical data, and the NACI said on Tuesday that it made the change after reviewing “real-world effectiveness studies”. The recommendation still said Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna should be “prioritised” for older age groups.