Health Canada Is Reviewing Its First-Ever COVID-19 Vaccine For Approval

This is huge! With all the efforts going on to get a COVID-19 vaccine, Canada has received its first submission for approval and now the first-ever review process is underway.

On October 1, a vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca in partnership with the University of Oxford was submitted for authorization to Health Canada.

"This is an important step for Canada in its response to the pandemic, but it is just one step on the road to obtaining safe and effective vaccines," the government agency said.

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20,000,000 doses of this vaccine that Canada signed an agreement for

Health Canada will be doing a rolling review of the vaccine data to make sure it meets safety and efficacy requirements.

Companies can submit information and data about effectiveness and safety as they go along instead of all at once after all the trial phases are done.

That allows Health Canada to start reviewing right away to speed up the process.

A decision on the approval of this or any other vaccine won't happen until there is all the necessary evidence to show that it's safe and effective.

So, it could still take months for this one to get authorization.

If that happens, Health Canada will publish the reviewed evidence.

Canada has secured more than 100 million doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines from multiple companies.

That includes 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine if it's approved.