Alberta urged to follow federal guidance as it develops fall COVID-19 vaccine plan

Infectious disease experts are hoping the Alberta government will fully adopt federal COVID-19 vaccine guidance as it plans its immunization rollout for later this year.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recently released its recommendations for the fall and winter.

It continues to strongly recommend COVID-19 shots for high-risk groups, including everyone over 65, care home residents, people with specific medical conditions, pregnant people, health care workers, people from First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, as well as members of racialized communities.

As a secondary recommendation, it says provinces may also offer the vaccine to everyone else six months of age and older.

“Individuals may choose to receive the vaccine based on individual COVID-19 risk assessment or preference,” the document states.

The Alberta government faced pushback last year when it started charging many people $100 for the COVID-19 vaccine. The only other province to do so was Quebec.

The province did offer it for free to a number of high-risk groups, including those with specific health conditions, health care workers, seniors in care homes and those receiving the Alberta Seniors Benefit, among others.

But some groups deemed high risk by NACI were not included in the eligibility list.

For example, the province did not provide the vaccine for free to all Albertans aged 65 and older.

“There was a lot of confusion about eligibility and I think that really put some people off getting it,” said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta Hospital.

According to Saxinger, that means there is a large number of people who haven’t been vaccinated for a year or more.

“We know that those people will be at elevated risk,” she said. “And so we had a very influenza dominant year last year. I would not be surprised to have a COVID dominant year next year, because the vaccine uptake and the number of infections was relatively less.”

Provincial data shows nearly eight per cent of Albertans received a COVID-19 dose during the 2025-26 season.

Saxinger is hoping for more clarity from the province, ahead of this fall’s vaccine rollout, about who is eligible and where they can get it.

“I do think there was significant variance from the NACI guidelines in Alberta in terms of the age-related eligibility, and I think that made it a lot less clear,” said Saxinger.

She’d like to see the province offer the vaccine for free to all Albertans 65 and older.

And she’s calling for the publicly funded doses to be available in pharmacies this fall, which was not the case last year. The province eventually allowed pharmacists to give them out in the spring.

According to the University of Calgary’s Craig Jenne, vaccines often work best when they’re free and easy to access.

“The more barriers we put in — the more complicated, the more cost — the less likely it is individuals will opt for a vaccine even though they may qualify for one or are recommended to receive one by agencies such as NACI,” said Jenne, a professor in the department of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases.

The Alberta government is not yet sharing its plans for the fall.

“We will provide an update on fall immunizations in the coming months and share additional information at that time,” said Maddison McKee, press secretary to Alberta’s Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services.

“The new guidance from NACI is substantially the same as last season, which we followed with minimal differences.”

Multiple experts have pushed back against the provincial government’s messaging that it is following NACI’s guidance.

Meanwhile, Jenne said the federal recommendations underscore the importance of ensuring vaccines are available as a personal health choice. That could apply to teachers and other people who work in crowded indoor environments, he said.

“They may not have an underlying health risk, but they still want to avoid catching COVID, and their chances of being exposed are much higher than the average Canadian,” he said.

“So NACI is recommending the vaccines be made available to those people if they so want to be vaccinated.”

Beyond hospitalization and death, he cautioned, COVID-19 can still cause nasty infections and even long COVID.