Toronto Star

Pfizer pausing shipments to Canada next week, Ottawa says

Trudeau should get tougher with company’s CEO, Ford says, as delivery delays spark anger

- TONDA MACCHARLES OTTAWA BUREAU ROB FERGUSON

OTTAWA—Vaccine deliveries will come to a screeching halt next week as pharmaceut­ical giant Pfizer slashes shipments to Canada to zero while it retools its Belgium plant to expand production.

The announceme­nt by Anita Anand, the federal minister in charge of vaccine procuremen­t, and Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin,

in charge of federal vaccine logistics, upended national vaccine rollout plans.

Pfizer will deliver no vaccine doses to Canada the week of Jan. 25, after delivering 82 per cent of this week’s doses.

That’s a harder hit than was expected after Friday’s announceme­nt that Pfizer would reduce by half its shipments over the next four weeks to Canada and to all countries that have purchased its doses.

In Toronto, the delay forced the closure of a high-profile vaccine clinic the day after it opened, and health workers with appointmen­ts saw them cancelled. The clinic had been touted as a blueprint for future mass immunizati­on.

The pause infuriated Premier Doug

Ford, who said he was “very angry” at the fluctuatin­g delivery schedule especially in light of Pfizer’s statement that it would restore supplies to the European Union starting Jan. 25, the same week that Canada’s supply nosedives.

Ford blamed Pfizer, not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but suggested the Trudeau government wasn’t pushing Pfizer’s chief executive hard enough to secure timely supplies. “I’d be up that guy’s ying-yang so far with a firecracke­r he wouldn’t know what hit him. I would not stop until we get these vaccines,” Ford told a news conference at Queen’s Park.

Ford issued a public appeal to incoming U.S. president Joe Biden to allow a shipment of at least one million doses from Pfizer’s plant in Kalamazoo, Mich., to be sent to Canada.

“My American friends, help us out,” said Ford.

“You have a new president. No more excuses. We need your support and we look forward to your support. And that’s a direct message to President Biden: Help out your neighbour. You want us all to get along, you know, hunky dory, kumbaya? Help us.”

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech took public funding from the American government to develop their messenger RNA vaccine and are contractua­lly obligated to supply the first 100 million doses produced in Kalamazoo to the U.S.

Anand, on the defensive, said she’s still pressing for earlier deliveries and insisted that Pfizer has assured her Canada will get its “full allotment” of four million doses by the end of March.

The news disrupts vaccine delivery schedules just as highly contagious variants of the novel coronaviru­s are popping up around the world, with 23 cases of the strain first identified in the U.K. now found in Canada.

Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said Monday the virus variants might mean Canada would need even more vaccine uptake than the 60 to 70 per cent coverage normally thought to provide broad community protection known as “herd immunity.”

But the changing delivery schedule is creating havoc for provinces like Ontario and Quebec.

After Pfizer delivered 124,800 doses in the first week of January, the company had been expected to ship about 208,650 doses weekly to Canada throughout January.

That was to ramp up in February to 366,000 to 367,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine

per week, or about 60,000 doses more per week, and represente­d, Fortin said on Jan. 8, “an advance on Canada’s March allocation­s.”

The total expected Pfizer deliveries in February under the old schedule was 1.4 million doses.

Now that is all up in the air. According to Pfizer’s latest adjustment­s, Canada will receive a minor reduction — of 18 per cent — this week to a shipment that was almost ready for transit — but next week’s supply will completely dry up, and over four weeks will experience a 50 per cent cut overall, until the company begins to increase Canadian deliveries once again in late February.

Ottawa would not commit to any revised projection of February’s totals.

Anand gave no hint if supplies would be increased or whether the rest of Canada’s promised

Q1 supply would come earlier once Pfizer’s plant in Puurs, Belgium, has expanded.

She said simply that Canada expects to be on equal footing with other countries.

“I don’t have the answers regarding Pfizer’s decisions, but we have been assured of equitable treatment, and we have been assured that we will receive the four million doses as previously promised.”

Provinces like Quebec and Ontario where the second COVID-19 wave is hitting hardest reacted instantly.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé said his province will vaccinate 225,000 people, not 250,000 as hoped, by early February.

He said it justifies Quebec’s earlier decision to vaccinate as many elderly vulnerable people in long-term care and health workers with a first dose, even though it means delaying a second

shot by 90 days.

The federal government has never publicly disclosed the contracts’ details, total costs, or penalties, and now Quebec says “unfortunat­ely it’s too late” for the provinces to try to negotiate their own deals, a point Ford underlined as well.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it a “momentary delay” in production that was to be expected as global demand for vaccines intensifie­s and only a few vaccines are yet approved. Canada has approved two: Pfizer and a similar vaccine Moderna.

Moderna is shipping every three weeks to Canada, and there’s no change so far to that.

So Canada still expects a combined six million doses — from Pfizer and Moderna — by the end of March.

Anand said contracts ensure Canada will have 70 million vaccines between Moderna and

Pfizer in this country prior to the end of September so that all Canadians who wish to be vaccinated can be vaccinated.” By the end of 2021, that total will be 80 million.

The announceme­nt came as Ontario was announcing changes to prioritize nursing homes, high-risk retirement homes and fly-in Indigenous communitie­s with shipments to be shorted by 66,000 doses over the next four weeks. The news means another 15,000 lost doses at a time when Ontario has promised to get first shots in the arms of all residents, staff and essential caregivers in nursing and high-risk retirement homes by Feb. 15.

Retired general Rick Hillier, head of Ontario’s vaccinatio­n task force, said he hopes the province can still meet the Feb. 15 goal despite the shortage.

Second doses for health-care workers in hospitals who have had their first jabs of Pfizer vaccines will be delayed up to the maximum 42 days recommende­d by Health Canada.

But second doses for nursing homes and retirement homes will be given according to the recommende­d Pfizer schedule of three weeks after the first shot to provide optimal protection against the virus because most residents have weakened immune systems, Hillier said.

Inventorie­s will be carefully monitored, he pledged.

Nursing homes and high-risk retirement homes in Toronto, Peel, York, Windsor-Essex, Durham, Ottawa and SimcoeMusk­oka have been given first doses, accounting for about 40 per cent of such facilities in the province.

 ?? FRANK GUNN THE CANADIAN PRESS ?? Premier Doug Ford toured Cortellucc­i Vaughan Hospital on Monday. On Tuesday, he addressed the United States and president-elect Joe Biden about the vaccine shortage. “Help out your neighbour. You want us all to get along, you know, hunky dory, kumbaya? Help us.”
FRANK GUNN THE CANADIAN PRESS Premier Doug Ford toured Cortellucc­i Vaughan Hospital on Monday. On Tuesday, he addressed the United States and president-elect Joe Biden about the vaccine shortage. “Help out your neighbour. You want us all to get along, you know, hunky dory, kumbaya? Help us.”
 ??  ?? Scan this code for more on vaccine distributi­on in Canada.
Scan this code for more on vaccine distributi­on in Canada.

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