MADE-INCANADA SOLUTION DELAYED
Montreal facility behind schedule, PM confirms
An expansion for a National Research Council facility in Montreal that could be making one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates has been delayed by months.
Even if construction was on schedule, Canada hasn't secured the rights to manufacture that vaccine.
Early in the pandemic, the government pledged $44 million for an expansion of the NRC'S Royalmount Avenue facility in Montreal. That work was supposed to be completed this month and would have allowed the facility to produce up to 250,000 doses a month.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed in Question Period on Wednesday that the facility's construction is not finished.
“We commissioned to build a vaccine manufacturing facility at the Royalmount Research Council facility in Montreal. But we are still in construction of that facility,” he said. “We have made investments to stand up more bio-manufacturing capacity in Canada after 10 long years of a Conservative government that saw most of our vaccine manufacturers cut production.”
In a statement, the NCR confirmed their facility would not be ready until mid- 2021. Any vaccine manufacturing facility has to meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards and the NRC said they realized this fall the planned space would not meet those standards.
“We are, therefore, pivoting to create the permanent Gmp-compliant clinical trial materials facility elsewhere in the existing building,” the NRC wrote in a statement.
The NRC said the facility was initially planned as part of their work with Cansino Biologics, a Chinese firm developing a vaccine, but the deal fell apart in August when Chinese customs refused to ship vaccine samples to Canada for clinical trials.
In late August, the government pledged an additional $126 million for a larger manufacturing centre at the NRC'S Montreal facility. That would be a full-sized plant, capable of making millions of doses a month, but it is not set to be finished for two years. A major investment also went to the University of Saskatchewan's VIDO-INTERVac facility, but that is also more than a year away.
On Tuesday, Trudeau cautioned Canadians that while some countries may receive their vaccines beginning in December, Canada would have to wait because there was no manufacturing capacity here.
There are three leading COVID- 19 vaccine candidates that have shown strong results in clinical trials and are currently working through the Health Canada approval process.
Pfizer and Moderna both make vaccines using a new type of MRNA technology and there are no facilities to produce their vaccine in Canada.
Canada placed its first order for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines on Aug. 5. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine that was a few weeks after both the U.K. and U.S. In the case of Moderna, Canada's order was ahead of both countries, though the U. S. government helped to fund initial research. The U.K. did not place an order until earlier this month.
Astrazeneca, who partnered with Oxford University, are using a type of vaccine technology that could have been manufactured at the Montreal facility if construction had been completed. Astrazeneca's latest results showed on average it was 70 per cent effective at preventing infection with COVID-19, but the company's trial involved two different dosing regimes and there are now questions about its results.
The Astrazeneca vaccine was among the last Canada ordered, placing an order for 20 million doses in late September, well after several other countries.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner demanded in Question Period to know if Canada had even negotiated for the right to make vaccines domestically.
“Did you even bother to negotiate the right for Canada to manufacture these vaccines at home? Do we have the ability to do this and when are Canadians going to get these vaccines?” she asked Trudeau.
Trudeau did not answer that question directly, but government sources speaking on background said the vaccine contracts don't include a right to make them domestically, largely because the government would have had no place to make them. The sources indicated they were confident the manufacturers would be open to domestic production, but there are no domestic facilities in Canada.
Alan Bernstein, president and CEO of the research institute CIFAR and a member of the government's vaccine task force, said there would be a lot of details to work out, but the government should consider working with Astrazeneca to produce the vaccine in Montreal when the facility was ready.
He said the facility could be helpful.
“So 250,000 a month would make a big difference for us. You know, that's probably the number of frontline health care workers,” he said.
Bernstein said the vaccine task force, which has made all the recommendations on what the government should buy, wanted a diverse portfolio with several different technologies and companies involved. He said they knew early on that domestic manufacturing capacity wasn't available and didn't make it a major part of their considerations.
“The manufacturing aspect maybe should have been a primary consideration, but it wouldn't have made any difference, because we have no manufacturing capacity for any of them.”
Bernstein said he was confident vaccines would arrive in Canada shortly after their approval.
“We're not going to be first. I'm hoping we'll be in the first five countries. I'm pretty sure we will be.”
Bernstein said Canada's vaccine production facilities have been on the decline for decades, as companies moved to other countries seeking higher prices. He said vaccines were also a difficult area for pharmaceutical firms to invest in because they only get to sell a vaccine once, compared to prescription medication.
He said governments could have invested in domestic manufacturing, expanding the NRC facility as an example, 25 years ago.
“There wasn't a COVID-19 pandemic back then or even five years ago, or even 10 years ago, so it wasn't viewed as a crisis situation.”