Canada is about to scrap more than half of its Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses because it couldn’t find any takers at home or abroad.
You also have to explain how you plan to administer millions of doses of the Novavax and Medicago vaccines you bought but are unlikely to use.
Canada signed a contract with AstraZeneca in 2020 to obtain 20 million doses of its vaccine, with 2.3 million Canadians receiving at least one dose, mostly between March and June 2021.
Read more:
Are fourth doses of COVID-19 needed amid Omicron’s spread? The experts say
Following concerns in the spring of 2021 about rare but life-threatening blood clots from AstraZeneca, and with larger supplies of mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, Canada stopped using AstraZeneca. In July 2021, he promised to donate the rest of his purchased supply, around 17.7 million doses.
In an emailed statement, Health Canada said “Canada did everything possible” to keep that promise, but 13.6 million doses intended for that have expired and will have to be disposed of.
“Due to limited demand for the vaccine and recipient country challenges with distribution and absorption, they were not accepted,” the statement said.
In June 2021, Canada also said it would also donate 4.1 million doses from AstraZeneca that it paid to get from the COVAX vaccine exchange alliance, but would not need.
In total, Canada donated 8.9 million doses of AstraZeneca through bilateral agreements and its COVAX supply, to 21 countries, between August 4, 2021 and March 25, 2022.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, an infectious disease specialist originally from St. John’s and now a senior adviser to the director of the World Health Organization, told The Canadian Press in a recent interview that Canada’s lack of confidence in AstraZeneca contributed to doubts about vaccines worldwide.
He said countries like Canada first stockpiled all the vaccines, then turned down AstraZeneca and offered it to low-income nations to fulfill their donation promises. Often those donations were made in large amounts close to their due dates.
An overdose of a vaccine that people were hesitant to get in countries that lacked the health workers and infrastructure to carry out a complex, fast-paced vaccination campaign was the perfect storm for rejection and expiration. .
“They have made it incredibly difficult for political leaders in low-income countries to get coverage,” Aylward said.
About 85 percent of Canadians consider themselves fully vaccinated, compared to 61 percent of the world’s population and just 16 percent of people living in the world’s poorest countries.
Adam Houston, medical policy and advocacy officer for Doctors Without Borders in Canada, said that 75 percent of the AstraZeneca doses that Canada promised to donate will be wasted “is extremely disappointing.”
“This underscores how vaccines in press releases don’t translate to vaccines in the arms,” he said. “Today, the global supply of vaccines is no longer the main problem. But a year ago, it absolutely was. Had the actions of countries like Canada matched his rhetoric on vaccine fairness since the start of the pandemic, less vaccine would have been wasted and, far more importantly, more lives saved.”
Canada has also pledged to donate 10 million doses from Johnson & Johnson and Moderna. The first has had production problems and Canada has not donated any of that vaccine. It donated 6.1 million Moderna doses to four countries between December and June, but another 1.2 million Moderna doses expired and were thrown away in Canada.
Read more:
Health Canada approves AstraZeneca’s drug Evusheld for COVID-19 prevention
NDP health critic Don Davies said it was “unacceptable” for doses to expire when millions of people have yet to receive a single injection.
“There is no excuse for such waste,” Davies said.
He called on the federal government to finally release all the details of its vaccine contracts and its plan for using the doses.
Canada also signed contracts to get 52 million doses of the vaccine from Novavax and 20 million from Medicago, but now relies almost entirely on Pfizer and Moderna.
Canada has received 3.2 million doses of Novavax so far, with no current plans for more deliveries. It has not received Medicago, but a spokeswoman said Canada is working with that company on a delivery schedule.
The World Health Organization licensed Novavax’s vaccine for emergency use in December and Health Canada in February. The contract allows Canada to donate doses of both, but there has been no confirmation that Canada intends to donate either.
Donating Medicago is more complex because the World Health Organization will not approve it for COVAX use due to Medicago’s financial ties to tobacco giant Philip Morris.
Neither Novavax nor Medicago responded to media inquiries Tuesday.
© 2022 The Canadian Press