Pfizer vaccine deliveries next week: Zero
4 million doses promised by end of march
Ottawa • Canada will receive zero Pfizer vaccines next week as the company temporarily suspends deliveries, further slowing a vaccine rollout that is lagging behind other countries as the pandemic kills more Canadians every day.
Pfizer first announced last week it would be reducing deliveries to all countries that receive shipments from its plant in Belgium, as the company upgrades the facility to produce more vaccines.
the cut is expected to reduce shipments to Canada for the next three to four weeks. Maj.-gen. Dany Fortin, who is overseeing the government’s rollout, said Canada received 82 per cent of its expected shipment of 208,000 doses this week, but would receive no deliveries next week.
In the first two weeks of February, when doses had been set to rise to 367,000 a week, they would now be lower, before returning to expectations and growing in late February and into March. Doses of the Moderna vaccine will continue as normal, but Pfizer’s product has made up most of the deliveries so far.
Prime Minister Justin trudeau stressed the setback was temporary and said Canada would still receive four million doses of Pfizer’s product before the end of March.
“Our vaccination objectives for the first quarter of the year, January to March, are not changing. the total number of doses committed to us is still the same, with every Canadian who wants to get vaccinated, able to get vaccinated by September,” he said.
Ontario Premier doug Ford said he was disappointed the vaccines would be delayed. he didn’t blame Trudeau, but said everything must be done to speed up deliveries.
“I’m just angry at the situation and that other countries are getting it and nothing is more important than getting these vaccines,” he said. “This vaccine is the difference between life and death for our most vulnerable.”
he called on Trudeau to take an aggressive stance with Pfizer.
“I would be on the phone every single day,” he said. “I would be up that guy’s yingyang, so far with a firecracker he wouldn’t know what hit him.”
Ford pleaded with incoming u.s. president Joe Biden to send some doses from a Pfizer plant in Kalamazoo, Mich, to Canada to help. however, under terms the company signed with the u.s. government, the facility’s output will go only to the u.s in 2021.
On Monday, more than 5,000 new cases of the virus were reported and there were 80 more deaths.
Procurement Minister Anita Anand said the government expected there would be some bumps in deliveries and said that was why Canada purchased from so many different suppliers.
“We knew that we would likely need to weather challenges with supply given complex manufacturing, unprecedented global demand and rapid acceleration to peak production,” she said.
Anand said she had been speaking with Pfizer all weekend and was confident Canada would not be hit worse than any other country that received orders from the Belgium plant.
Pfizer spokesperson Christina Antoniou said several countries were being hit by the shortage, but the added capacity would allow the company to make good on its commitments.
“We expect this situation to last in Canada until mid-february when we will be able to increase allocations to catch up,” she said in an email. “Multiple countries around the world will be impacted in the short term but we are confident we will deliver the total committed doses by the end of Q1.”
Trudeau did not announce the details of Pfizer’s slowdown in his press conference Tuesday morning, leaving that to Fortin to announce an hour later
even before the setback with Pfizer’s deliveries, Canada was trailing other countries in inoculations. While Canada expects a total of 80 million doses split between Pfizer and Moderna before the end of September, enough to vaccinate every Canadian, only six million doses will arrive before the end of March. With the two dose nature of the vaccines, that will cover less than 10 per cent of the population.
Conservative health critic Michelle rempel Garner said the Liberals had to come clean about the full details of the rollout, so Canadians could see how it stood up to scrutiny.
“When they say that every Canadian will have a dose of vaccine by September, what assumptions have they made on approval, timelines, and availability of other vaccine candidates and if those don’t come to pass what’s plan B?”
She said she wanted the government to succeed, so Canadians could get back to a normal life, but that clearly had not happened.
“I really don’t take any pleasure in saying that they haven’t delivered.”
According to the Bloomberg News service, as of Monday, Canada was 12th in the world on vaccines delivered on a per-capita basis. Behind countries like Israel, the u.k. and the united States and the united Arab emirates, as well as several small european countries.
The united Kingdom has approved the Astrazeneca vaccine and made it a major part of its rollout. The vaccine has not yet approved in either Canada or the united States.
Trudeau was asked why Canada hadn’t ordered more doses for the first quarter. he said there were only so many doses available from Pfizer and Moderna before the vaccines were approved and manufacturing could ramp up.
“The challenge is, as of december 1, 2020, there were none of these vaccines being produced anywhere in the world for general use. They were all in testing and trials in the scientific community,” he said.