COVAX added to list of vaccine confusion
OTTAWA — Procurement Minister Anita Anand said this week she is confident Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine deliveries will only get better going forward but just hours after she made the remark, Canada’s vaccine purchases got slammed again.
“The worst week was last week,” Anand said Tuesday night.
But within hours of the statement, potential deliveries from the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as the COVAX Facility diminished and Canada learned the production problems that cut this week’s deliveries from Moderna by 20 per cent are now going to affect the next shipment as well. Moderna was to deliver almost 250,000 doses to Canada the third week of February. It hasn’t said yet what the impact will be. A spokesperson for Moderna told The Canadian Press the company remains “on track” to meet its contract to supply two million doses of its vaccine by the end of March.
They are but the latest headaches for Canada’s vaccine efforts, coming after supply constraints cut Pfizer-BioNTech deliveries by more than twothirds over four weeks, and European export controls that could put our entire supply of vaccines at risk.
Provinces and territories, which in mid-January got close to vaccinating 50,000 people a day, only vaccinated 5,000 people Jan. 31. Canada, which was one of the first countries to start vaccinating its citizens in midDecember, has fallen out of the top 30 countries when it comes to the proportion of people vaccinated.
But there was some good news. Europe’s assurances to Canada that the export controls wouldn’t stop Canadian shipments came through and new deliveries from Pfizer and Moderna are already landing in Canada.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said that controls would be used “only in
very limited cases” and that Europe is particularly mindful about the impact it could have on countries like Canada, with no domestic COVID-19 vaccine production currently.
On Tuesday afternoon, Anand received confirmation from the COVAX Facility that Canada would be shipped at least 1.9 million and as many as 3.2 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19
vaccine by the end of June.
But Wednesday morning, information COVAX published on its website listed only the smaller amount and the international body has not given Canada any explanation.
The documents warn all deliveries are contingent on supplies available.