Canada's Alberta province halts AstraZeneca vaccine first shots due to supply issue

CALGARY, Alberta: The Canadian province of Alberta has stopped administering first doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine because of limited supply, a provincial government spokesman said on Tuesday.

"This decision is based on the fact that we are receiving no known future shipments of AstraZeneca at this time but are receiving large quantities of mRNA vaccines," Alberta Health spokesman Tom McMillan said in an email, referring to messenger RNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech . Last week, Alberta reported its first case of a patient dying from a rare blood clot condition after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. There have been three such deaths in Canada.