Rumours play role as COVID-19 vaccine shoppers in Canada become increasingly label conscious

Pfizer emerges atop the brand hierarchy for COVID-19 vaccines, with AstraZeneca at the bottom

The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has emerged as the most popular vaccine option on social media, despite the Moderna product proving equally safe and effective in clinical trials and real-world studies.In early June, family physician Vanessa Redditt and her colleagues in Ontario’s refugee health care community

Dr. Redditt, who practises at the Crossroads Clinic for refugees at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, drafted the bulletin after discovering that a handful of her patients were reluctant to take the lesser-known Moderna shot.“I think a lot of it comes from word of mouth,” she said. “If a trusted friend or trusted family member has recommended a specific brand – in this case, Pfizer – that goes so much further than any government website that says mRNA vaccines are the same.

Until now, the sought-after Pfizer vaccine has been the most widely available in Canada. That’s about to change: Over the next three weeks, Canada is set to receive nearly 9.5 million Moderna shots, one million of them as part of a newly announced donation from the United States. Those doses were expected to land in Canada on Thursday night.

The roller-coaster ride of recommendations around AstraZeneca is part of what gave rise to vaccine shopping in Canada in the first place, according to Peter Loewen, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto whose research group has been analyzing weekly online surveys on Canadian attitudes toward COVID-19.

It’s difficult to say how often that translates to people turning down a Moderna shot in the real world. Provincial governments aren’t tracking refusals by brand, and some provinces, including Saskatchewan, let people select their brand of mRNA shot when booking, reducing the risk of walkouts.

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