Ottawa puts out tender on vaccine distribution
Though no candidate has been approved, logistics on delivery begin now
The federal government has started the search for at least one company that could be ready and waiting as early as January to distribute COVID-19 vaccine across the country.
A tender posted Thursday pulls back the curtain on the earliest possible timeline the federal government is working with in terms of a vaccine becoming available to Canadians — and on some of the considerations that are at play.
It seeks a company or companies that could transport vaccine doses, including to remote and isolated communities, keeping them at the appropriate temperatures and tracking their location during the process.
The job remains dependant on a vaccine having been approved — and that remains anything but a done deal, as no vaccine candidate has yet completed clinical trials, let alone received the go-ahead from Health Canada.
Still, according to the notice, the government wants a company that can begin work in mid-December in order to be ready to distribute a vaccine that is “expected to be approved” sometime between January and March 2021.
Each province and territory is current developing its own plans and will handle the final stage of local distribution.
The federal government is hoping to have a contract locked down by the end of the month.
There’s no dollar amount listed on the tender, and a spokesperson said the final price will be determined during contract negotiations.
“Canada’s proactive approach to securing access to a diversity of COVID-19 vaccine candidates has put us in a strong position, with first deliveries on track to arrive during the beginning of 2021, contingent on Health Canada authorization,” Procurement Minister Anita Anand said in a statement.
Any potential vaccine must clear the three phases of clinical testing — designed to prove each experimental candidate is safe and effective — and be approved by Health Canada’s team of scientists before they can be used in this country.
But planning is already underway for what happens after a vaccine is approved.
According to the posting, vaccine manufacturers will be responsible for initial packaging of their product and dropping it off in Canada, or in some cases, getting it to the nearest international airport.
Alogistics company will take it from there. Because it’s unknown which vaccines could be approved, the tender-taking company would have to be ready for any of them.
One of the biggest variables is refrigeration, since each vaccine has its own optimal temperature, whether that be cold, ultra cold or frozen, depending on the type of vaccine.
Two of the current vaccine front-runners are using what’s called mRNA, which is a new technology that a lot of experts consider very promising. The catch is that they need to be stored at temperatures as cold as -80 C. Those that need that ultra cold storage will travel packed in dry ice that needs to be monitored, the tender said.
There is also a time limit that comes with the contract. If one of the provinces or territories submits an emergency request, the company will have to be able to get a shipment to them within 48 hours. In addition, the location and temperature of all batches must be trackable at all times.
Meanwhile, big questions remain, such as where, exactly, vaccines will be going, how long can they be stored and where they’ll be shipping from. The government is also still working on how to get vaccines to Canadians serving abroad.
According to the tender, Canada expects the work to continue until at least the first half of 2022.
Just how reasonable is the timeline cited in the tender?
Back in June, a group of researchers from McGill University asked 28 experts with experience in academia, industry and government when they thought a vaccine would be available, and their median guess was that while one might become available for at risk groups early next year, the general population would probably have to wait until next fall.
Canada has spent the past few months locking down access to seven leading vaccine candidates around the world in the form of purchase agreements that entitle Canadians to a certain number of doses, should they prove successful.
Citing the competitiveness of the global market, the government has been mum on most of the details, including how much is being spent on each contract or when deliveries would happen. But officials have previously said that the earliest possible dates were in the first quarter of next year.
In the statement, Anand says Canada’s delivery schedules put us in line with the European Union, Japan and Australia, among others.
In other preparations for an eventual vaccination campaign, Canada has secured 90 million syringes, 100 million needles and 75 million bandages plus sterile gauze.