Archive 27: NACI summary of the COVID-19 vaccine chapter in the Canadian Immunization Guide [2021-12-23]

Publication date: December 23, 2021

On this page

• Overview
• What you need to know

Overview

• The Canadian Immunization Guide (CIG) is an online resource for vaccine administrators, including health professionals and vaccine program decision-makers, in Canada. It includes recommendations and statements from expert advisory committees, including the National Advisory Committee on Immunization's (NACI) and Canada's Committee to Advise on Tropical Medicine and Travel (CATMAT).
• The integration of NACI advice and statements into CIG chapters is standard practice, as the CIG is designed to be used as a reference for national vaccine guidance by frontline health care providers.
• On December 23, 2021, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) published a new COVID-19 vaccine chapter of the CIG. This chapter includes NACI's recommendations on the use of COVID-19 vaccines up to and including October 29, 2021.
• This marks a change in the way that NACI COVID-19 vaccine advice is being presented to healthcare providers, to make the information more accessible and to present it in a format similar to other vaccines.
• Future NACI guidance on the use of COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be published on the NACI webpage as short statements or rapid responses. These statements will be incorporated into the CIG COVID-19 vaccine chapter as quickly as possible for healthcare providers. Previous iterations of NACI's recommendations on the use of COVID-19 vaccines will remain on the NACI webpage under the COVID-19 section.
• The COVID-19 vaccine chapter can be found under Part 4: Active Vaccines of the Canadian Immunization Guide.

What you need to know

• NACI is an external body of experts that provides independent advice to PHAC on the optimal use of vaccines in Canada. Typically, before the pandemic, NACI recommendations were first published in a statement on the NACI webpage and then integrated into the CIG.
• Evidence on COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines has been rapidly evolving throughout the pandemic. As a result, NACI developed a base statement - Recommendations on the use of COVID-19 vaccines - that could be updated with new NACI guidance as COVID-19 vaccines became approved in Canada and as the evidence on these vaccines evolved. Internationally, other national immunization technical advisory groups used a similar approach.
• NACI's recommendations on the use of COVID-19 vaccines will now be incorporated into the CIG in a new COVID-19 vaccine chapter, as is standard practice for other vaccines, to make it easier for health professionals to quickly find the appropriate advice for questions on the use of COVID-19 vaccines.
• The CIG is a summary of NACI and CATMAT recommendations written for health care providers and public health practitioners, vaccine policy and decision makers, immunization program planners and vaccine administrators.
• The CIG is divided into five parts. Part 4 - Active Vaccines is organized into disease-specific chapters that provide information about disease characteristics and epidemiology, as well as vaccine-specific information and recommendations for use. Chapters are updated when new evidence on vaccines becomes available and when NACI releases new guidance on the use of vaccines.
• The COVID-19 vaccine chapter will be found under Part 4 - Active Vaccines. It will summarize important information required for front-line healthcare providers delivering COVID-19 immunization services. It will include all NACI recommendations on the use of COVID-19 vaccines up to and including October 29, 2021.
• The chapter will not include the entirety of the references, data, and evidence summaries that have been part of the COVID-19 base statement; however, previous iterations of the base statement that include these details will remain on the NACI webpage under the COVID-19 section.
• Future NACI guidance on the use of COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be published on the NACI webpage under the COVID-19 section as short statements or rapid responses. These statements will be incorporated into the CIG COVID-19 vaccine chapter as quickly as possible.
• If you would like to be notified about the release of new NACI guidance or updates to the CIG, please subscribe to the NACI & CIG publications mailing list.