Trudeau says vaccines still ‘on track’
Number of Canadians vaccinated in the spring could double if green light given to three more vaccines
The prime minister on Friday sought to quell angst over delays in vaccine delivery while British Columbia extended restrictions on gatherings to stem the spread of new, more transmissible variants of the COVID-19 virus.
Justin Trudeau said his government knew all along that short-term delays in vaccine shipments would be possible and planned accordingly.
“But I hear it from all Canadians
right now: people are worried. People are tired of this pandemic,” he said. “They want to know when this winter’s going to be over. They want to know when they can go back to everything they’ve done before. They want to know mostly when their grandparents are going to be safe, when the vaccines are going to come.
“That’s why there’s a lot of anxiety and a lot of noise going on right now.”
Shipments of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine, one of two approved in Canada, have slowed as a plant in Belgium is retooled to eventually churn out more doses. Canada is getting about one-fifth of previously planned shipments this week and next.
An upcoming shipment of the Moderna vaccine is expected to be 50,000 doses shy of what had been expected due to production delays in Switzerland.
But Trudeau said Canada is “very much on track” to receive a total of six million doses of vaccine by the end of March, as planned. He reiterated that all Canadians who want to receive a vaccine will be able to do so by September.
The number of Canadians vaccinated in the spring could also double if Health Canada gives the green light to all three vaccines it is currently reviewing.
But Canada is unlikely to get any doses from those three companies directly until at least April, and confusion about deliveries of vaccines has thrown Canadian confidence in the Liberal government's vaccine rollout into a tailspin.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added to the confusion directly Friday when he said that he believed the 20 million doses Canada pre-ordered from AstraZeneca are to be delivered before the end of June.
But he was wrong. Federal officials from Public Services and Procurement Canada clarified there are potentially 20 million more doses coming in the spring but that is a combination of doses from all three companies with vaccines now under review by Health Canada. That includes AstraZeneca, but also Johnson and Johnson and Novavax.
Also Friday, Trudeau said the Liberal government has approved a request for help from the Pauingassi First Nation in northern Manitoba. He said the military was to arrive by Saturday.