Vaccine facilities too small, Anand says
Government on defensive as doses run short
OTTAWA • Procurement Minister Anita Anand said she tried to entice all of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to make their product here at home, but Canada didn’t have the facilities they needed.
Speaking at the House of Commons industry committee, Anand said she asked all seven of the firms providing vaccines to Canada to consider making them here, but Canada’s facilities were simply too small.
“Manufacturers concluded that bio-manufacturing capacity in this country, at the time of contracting last August and September, was too limited to justify the investment of capital and expertise to start manufacturing in Canada,” she said.
None of the seven deals Canada has signed for vaccines includes significant homegrown production. The government announced a deal earlier this week with Novavax to make its vaccine in Montreal, but that is unlikely to start before December. Medicago, the one Canadian company in the vaccine portfolio, will make most of their vaccines in the U.S.
NDP MP Don Davies questioned Anand on whether the government had really pushed hard enough to look at making vaccines here in Canada.
“Countries like Mexico, Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, and others have done so and are producing AstraZeneca vaccines domestically,” he said. “Did Canada seek this right?”
Anand said getting an agreement with AstraZeneca wasn’t the issue, it was about having what was necessary to make vaccine here.
“The reality is that standing up new manufacturing of a vaccine requires expertise.
“It requires resources from the supplier and given the scarcity of resources, suppliers emphasized locations that had existing capacity and would be able to manufacture quickly.”
Several MPs asked why the government hadn't done more to increase Canada's domestic manufacturing capability in the last year, particularly when compared to efforts in the United Kingdom.
Simon Kennedy, a deputy minister in the industry department, said the U.K. was simply much further ahead when the pandemic began.
“The U.K. has very large contract manufacturing operators that were capable of quickly shifting to produce COVID vaccine,” he said. “The U.K. certainly
IT'S NOT UNICORNS. IT IS BASED ON WHAT THE VACCINE SUPPLIERS ARE TELLING US.
pivoted, and was able to do manufacturing domestically but they were starting from a much higher base.”
The call for domestic manufacturing comes as imports of vaccines to Canada have dwindled considerably. Canada is expecting just 70,000 doses of COVID vaccine next week from Pfizer, before the company has promised a ramp-up to more than 300,000 doses per week in the last half of the month.
Moderna, the other approved vaccine, sent a reduced shipment to Canada this week and is expected to do so again at the end of the month. The company ships to Canada every three weeks and was expected to deliver 249,000 doses the week of Feb. 22.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is overseeing the distribution, said they don't know yet how large the shipment will be, but it won't be a full shipment.
“The quantities that we expect to receive remains to be confirmed by the manufacturer, so at this time, I can't really tell you what the quantity will be, but we do not expect to receive 249,000 doses at this time.”
Anand insisted, despite the string of bad news about the vaccine effort, that Canada remains on track to get six million doses by the end of March and enough for all Canadians by the end of September.
She said opposition politicians who were suggesting Canada would never meet that target need to tone down the rhetoric and deal with facts.
“That point of view, saying that it's impossible to occur, is simply untrue, based on what we're being told from the vaccine manufacturers themselves,” she said. “It's not pie in the sky. It's not unicorns. It is based on what the vaccine suppliers are telling us.”
She also addressed criticism that Canada is taking vaccine from the COVAX facility, an international partnership partially designed to ensure poor countries get the vaccine as well.
Canada contributed $440 million to the facility, with half of that money designated to purchase vaccines for Canada and half designated to buy vaccines for developing countries.
The agreement could provide nearly two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Canada is one of a few wealthy countries to draw from COVAX so far and also has a side agreement with AstraZeneca for 20 million doses.
Davies asked why Canada was touching that facility if the government was confident it had enough doses.
“Does it seem morally defensible to you that Canada is taking vaccines from poor countries?” Davies asked the minister.
Anand said they're doing everything they can to get more doses.
“In addition to these AstraZeneca doses under our bilateral agreement, we are scouring the globe for additional doses of AstraZeneca that we can bring into the country as soon as possible,” she said. “And that is why we opted in to the COVAX doses for AstraZeneca.”