Officials plan for vaccine rollout without set timeline

“We are preparing for one of the most ambitious and complex vaccination programs ever delivered in this country.”

OTTAWA — The federal government is running tabletop exercises and simulations to iron out any potential problems with Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, but the biggest wrinkle remains exactly when the vaccines will arrive.

Canada could start seeing doses rolled out by early January, with plans for Pfizer’s vaccine to be the first distributed, said government officials.

Later in the day, Reuters reported that Pfizer was slashing its 2020 target of producing 100 million doses by half, potentially meaning delays for some countries.

But a government source speaking on background shortly after the news broke, said for the time being they did not expect it would impact Canada’s deliveries.

Deputy chief public health officer Dr. Howard Njoo said the vaccine rollout was an enormous logistical challenge.

“We are preparing for one of the most ambitious and complex vaccination programs ever delivered in this country,” he said.

No vaccines are currently approved for use in Canada, with Pfizer and Moderna the furthest through the regulatory process. Pfizer’s vaccine was approved in the U.K. on Wednesday, the first country in the world to approve it, and health officials there expect to begin vaccinations next week.

Health Canada officials said they needed another week to 10 days before they were likely to issue an approval for Pfizer and were still gathering information from the company about the vaccine’s manufacturing process, but things were progressing well.

Njoo said the precise dates were not as important as ensuring Canada was ready when the vaccines arrived.

“We shouldn’t be so obsessed with the actual delivery of the vaccines themselves, the dates and so on, I think what’s really important is the fact that we’re doing exercises. The fact that we’ll be ready,” he said. “We’re looking at all sorts of contingency planning in terms of unforeseen circumstances, obviously bad weather in Canada, winter, accidents, all those things are taken into account, so when the vaccines actually do arrive we are ready.”

Maj.-gen. Dany Fortin, who was appointed to oversee the vaccine rollout last week, said the Public Health Agency of Canada had been doing table-top exercises and other simulations to work out all of the details with the provinces and territories.

He said supplies were moving out to provinces and territories now, in advance of the vaccine’s arrival. The government was hiring a logistics company to help with the rollout.

He said they intended to do a full exercise without the vaccine to ensure everything was in place and that everyone who would be administering the vaccine was trained.

Pfizer’s vaccine requires ultra-cold storage, at -80 C, and the company is prepared to deliver the vaccine directly to provincial and territorial storage facilities. Moderna’s vaccine, which must be kept below -20 C, will be delivered to the federal government and then shipped to provinces and territories. The federal government has purchased several ultra-cold and regular freezers and is prepared to share them with provinces and territories. It has also contracted for large amount of dry ice, which can be used to keep the Pfizer vaccine cold.

Fortin said he expected everything to be ready by midDecember even if the vaccines would not arrive until January.

“We’re hard at it in the next couple of weeks to ensure that we are ready and I kind of like the idea of being ready before the Christmas timeframe, so that we’re certain to be ready when it comes in January.”

Dr. Howard Njoo Deputy chief public health officer