Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the navy commander main Canada’s nationwide vaccine distribution effort, advised a technical briefing on the vaccine rollout in the present day that about 317,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine procured by way of COVAX arrived in Canada this morning.
The doses had been manufactured by South Korean pharmaceutical firm SK Bioscience, which has been contracted to make the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford College.
Canada has contributed $440 million to the COVAX facility, an initiative backed by the World Well being Group (WHO) and the United Nations geared toward guaranteeing equitable entry to vaccines.
Half of Canada’s contribution goes towards buying vaccine doses for much less developed nations, whereas the opposite half bought doses for Canadians. Canada expects to obtain roughly 1.6 million further doses by way of COVAX by the tip of June.
Canada has been extensively criticized for taking doses from the initiative. It’s the solely G7 nation anticipated to attract from the vaccine provide in this system’s first allotment — though a couple of different rich nations, comparable to New Zealand and Singapore, are additionally doing so. The overwhelming majority of COVAX doses are going to lower- and middle-income nations.
COVAX has delivered 38 million vaccine doses to over 100 economies since making its first worldwide supply to Ghana in late February, the WHO mentioned in a press launch in the present day.
10.5 million doses delivered, Fortin says
Fortin mentioned the federal authorities has distributed over 10.5 million doses of the authorized Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines to the provinces and territories as of in the present day. He maintained that each one adults who wish to obtain a vaccine ought to get their first doses by summer time or early fall.
“The projections we have now shared up to now are very optimistic and would lead one to imagine that if these deliveries happen as deliberate [and] with none delay or vital delay, provinces and territories will likely be able to vaccinate all Canadians … the grownup inhabitants, in time for summer time to early fall,” mentioned Fortin.
“If provinces and territories adhere to a four-month interval and the stream of vaccines, as I indicated, is optimistic or stays the identical … I cannot see why we would not be capable to speed up that.”
Deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have largely stabilized. Pfizer expects to ship one million doses every week in April and Might earlier than ramping as much as two million per week in June, for a complete of greater than 17 million doses by the tip of June.
Moderna is about to ship 855,600 doses subsequent week and 1,202,400 within the final week of April. A backlog in Moderna’s high quality assurance course of seems to have delayed these shipments by a number of days, though Fortin mentioned it is potential they’re going to arrive earlier.
Nonetheless no supply schedule for J&J vaccine
Federal officers nonetheless haven’t got a supply schedule for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine past an expectation that the primary cargo will arrive someday in late April. Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine acquired Well being Canada’s approval a month in the past and Canada has pre-ordered 10 million doses.
As for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, 1.4 million doses from america had been delivered final Saturday to provinces. The remaining 100,000 from a mortgage of 1.5 million from the U.S. will arrive this week, Fortin mentioned.
One other million AstraZeneca doses from the U.S. are anticipated by the tip of June, mentioned Joelle Paquette, a prime official with Public Providers and Procurement Canada.
Deputy Chief Public Well being Officer Dr. Howard Njoo mentioned greater than seven million doses have been administered throughout the nation.
Eighty-one per cent of individuals 80 years of age or older have acquired their first doses and 10 per cent have acquired their second doses, Njoo mentioned. Amongst these 70 to 79 years of age, 53 per cent have acquired their first dose and two per cent have acquired their second.
