The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) says it is “proactively” speaking with vaccine manufacturers to get a hold of bird flu vaccines to prepare for the event of a global bird flu pandemic.
According to Health Canada’s website, Canada currently has no avian influenza vaccines, but this will likely change shortly.
Speaking to Global News, one PHAC official said, “The Public Health Agency of Canada has proactively met with pandemic influenza vaccine suppliers (e.g., GSK, Seqirus and Sanofi) with whom we have an agreement for domestic or off-shore vaccine manufacturing to discuss pandemic influenza vaccine preparedness activities in order to inform steps that could be taken against avian influenza.”
“These activities include obtaining an H5N1 candidate vaccine virus and the possibility of producing pre-pandemic vaccine if and when production capacity is freed up from producing the seasonal influenza vaccines.”
Health Canada has also already begun establishing measures and recommendations for possible outbreaks, mirroring many of the protocols seen during the COVID lockdowns.
These measures include self-isolation, active reporting to authorities, and contact tracing, whether for animal-to-human cases of infection or human-to-human.
They further state they are actively monitoring all possible outbreaks and cases within the country, both human and animal.
First-ever ‘bird flu death’ deemed a hoax
This news comes just after the death of a Mexican man gained international attention following the WHO’s proclamation that it constitutes a ‘bird flu death’. However, Mexican health officials denied the claim, stating that the WHO’s report was “not accurate”.
“I can point out that the statement made by the World Health Organization is pretty bad since it speaks of a fatal case [of bird flu], which was not the case,” Mexican Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said.
According to Alocer, the 59-year-old man with little contact with poultry did not die from a new highly transmissible strain of bird flu but rather a combination of underlying conditions and severe illnesses culminating in “mainly kidney and respiratory failure”.
Nonetheless, following the widespread dissemination of the WHO’s false report via the mainstream media, countries around the world are on high alert, making deals with vaccine manufacturers to secure bird flu vaccines.
