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Health Canada approves Moderna's bivalent COVID-19 vaccine The first vaccine specifically targeting the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has now been approved in Canada. On Thursday, Health Canada gave the green light to Moderna's bivalent booster, authorizing the shots for Canadian adults. The bivalent booster triggers a "strong" immune response against the original variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 as well as BA.1, the original Omicron variant, the agency said. It's "essentially two vaccines in one," said Dr. Marc Berthiaume, director of the health products branch of Health Canada. The timing of vaccination and distribution will be important, said Dr. Ciriaco Piccirillo, an immunologist and senior scientist at the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) "It’s a race to get that Omicron bivalent vaccine deployed to the population at a point in time when a new wave in the fall will start rising," he told Global News. For more on when to get the updated doses and who should receive them, read Amanda Connolly's story here. The latest vaccine approval comes ahead of the fall season, when experts in Canada are anticipating another COVID-19 wave as children return to in-person classes and people gather indoors. Read more on how to stay safe in schools. 
Shortage of family doctors adding to ER chaos Millions of Canadians are increasingly being forced to seek non-urgent medical care in emergency departments due to a growing shortage of family physicians across the country. Nearly five million Canadians over the age of 12 did not have access to a family doctor in 2019, according to the latest available data from Statistics Canada. And that number has likely grown as an increasing number of family physicians across Canada have been reducing their patient loads, cutting hours or leaving family medicine altogether, according to the College of Family Physicians of Canada. "Absolutely, some of the volume that we're seeing in the emergency department is related to the fact that many people are now having to use the emergency department as a place to access care," said Dr. Katharine Smart, a pediatrician and the outgoing president of the Canadian Medical Association. In the latest instalment of the Global News series Code Blue: Resuscitating Canada's ERs, health reporter Teresa Wright takes a look at the domino effect of family doctor shortages on emergency rooms. Learn more about the series and read previous stories on Global News’ website. 
Q: Will Omicron boosters have different side effects than the original COVID-19 vaccines? Moderna's new Omicron booster has a similar safety profile to the previously approved Moderna Spikevax booster, according to Health Canada. Side effects are listed as "mild" and resolving quickly and similar to those experienced with the regular booster doses: muscle aches, chills, headache, fever and pain at the injection site. Pfizer's bivalent vaccine, which has not yet been approved in Canada, also demonstrated a favourable safety and tolerability profile similar to the original COVID-19 vaccine, the company said when announcing its clinical trial data. “The adverse effects that we should be expecting are no different from any other vaccine ever administered,” said Piccirillo. "The (vaccine) formulations are different, but they’re not sufficiently different to cause any adverse effects that we would anticipate." | 
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