Canada Has More COVID Vaccines Than It Needs, Stops More Deliveries

Additional COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to Canada are on hold because the provinces already have more doses than they can currently use.

Canada was due to receive 95 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines by the end of September, but it is about 20 million doses below Wednesday.

But Canada already has a reserve of 18.7 million doses and does not need more to fully vaccinate eligible people 12 and older. That includes 8.5 million doses shipped to provinces and not yet used and 10.2 million in a federal reserve provinces. they can come if they need it.

As of Wednesday, 80 percent of eligible Canadians were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and another seven percent received their first vaccination. At most, Canada would need 11 million doses to finish vaccinating everyone over 12 years of age.

As such, all provinces stopped ordering new doses at the end of August, and Canada has told suppliers not to send any more shipments for now.

Canadian officials are currently in talks with suppliers and other countries that need vaccines and are working on plans to donate excess doses from Pfizer and Moderna of Canada.

What people are reading

Canada has already pledged to donate 40 million doses it purchased but cannot use from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and the COVAX vaccine exchange alliance.

To date, it has shipped only 82,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine directly to Trinidad and Tobago.

Vaccine donations are more complicated than it seems at first glance, due to legal responsibilities and expiration problems of vaccine doses. Most countries will not accept doses if the expiration date is less than eight weeks, to ensure they can be used in time.

The vaccine contracts with Pfizer and Moderna also did not specify how excess doses could be donated, while the contracts Canada signed with AstraZeneca and J&J did.

US President Joe Biden called on countries like Canada to do more to help vaccinate the rest of the world following a virtual summit on vaccines at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

Biden said the United States was doubling its donations to more than a billion and said “we need other high-income countries to deliver on their own donations and ambitious vaccine promises.” He said the goal should be to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population within 12 months.

In a statement, the PMO said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined other world leaders in committing to that goal.

The Prime Minister also spoke about Canada’s commitment to supporting equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, including through significant financial support for vaccines and donations to countries.

He noted that to date, Canada has contributed more than $ 2.5 billion to help address the crisis globally, including sharing vaccine doses with the rest of the world.

Trudeau promised on the liberal electoral platform that Canada will donate “at least” 200 million doses of vaccine through COVAX by the end of next year.

Currently, 31 percent of the world’s population is fully vaccinated, but the deployment has been very uneven. Rich countries seized the vast majority of available doses, leaving developing countries to wait.

Africa has only fully vaccinated four percent of the population, compared with 51 percent in Europe and 45 percent in North America.

At least 13 countries are fully vaccinated above 70%. Canada, with 69.5 percent of the entire population fully vaccinated, is close.

Canada is also preparing to begin vaccinating children between the ages of five and 11, and Pfizer is expected to apply for authorization for that age group imminently. The company said earlier this week that a clinical trial showed the vaccine was safe and produced a strong antibody response in that age group.

The dose for children is one-third the size given to adults and it is not yet clear whether Canada could simply draw smaller doses from each vial of vaccine that has already been shipped.

A company spokeswoman said Wednesday that Pfizer was preparing a “different presentation for pediatric use,” but did not confirm whether that meant that none of the doses that Canada already has could be reused for children.

This Canadian Press report was first published on September 22, 2021.