A limited supply of Johnston and Johnston (Janssen) vaccine is available in the Yukon.
On Nov. 26, the government posted a single announcement to the Facebook page of the Health and Social department, noting that “a limited supply” of the Moderna alternative was available on Nov. 29 and 30 at Whitehorse Health Centre.
The website instructs to book an appointment to call 1-867-336-1508 with your full name and telephone number.
The website notes that “more appointments will be made available based on demand from Yukoners.”
While most adults in the territory received the Moderna vaccine, the Pfizer-BioNTech was offered to youth and is now also available to adults.
This represents the first time adult Yukoners were able to book an appointment for a vaccine other than Moderna.
While acting Chief Medical Officer André Corriveau made it clear on Nov. 30 that the government would prefer people receive the most effective version of the vaccine, opposition politicians from both parties have been questioning why more options are not being provided.
“We have this vaccine mandate coming in place. If we want people to get vaccinated, we need to make sure that we remove those barriers,” said NDP leader Kate White, following question period in the legislature.
“The more options, the better off we are,” she said.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are both “messenger RNA” vaccines. Both vaccines have around a 95 per cent efficacy rate that begins to slowly wane from four to six months after vaccination.
The Johnson & Johnson or Janssen vaccine is a different vaccine technology, called a “carrier” or “virus vector” vaccine, which was approved by Health Canada on Nov. 23. The initial single-dose vaccine has a 66 per cent overall efficacy when first administered, according to Health Canada.
Janssen also comes with a few warnings for rare reactions, including blood clots with low levels of blood platelets, capillary leak syndrome and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS).
It is not possible to catch COVID-19 from any of the three vaccines and neither the vector vaccine nor the mRNA vaccine change a person’s DNA.
Contact Haley Ritchie at haley.ritchie@yukon-news.com