TORONTO – New setbacks on the vaccine front. The immunization campaign in Canada is proceeding more slowly than expected due to the delays in deliveries announced by Moderna, with possible repercussions also for future supplies of the vaccine produced in the United States. According to the roadmap set by the federal control room and confirmed by the guide of the vaccine task, General Deny Fortin, Moderna was supposed to send about 855 thousand doses last week, but due to logistical problems, the vaccines have not yet been delivered.
The official reason for the non-delivery, which is having repercussions in the vaccination campaigns of the individual provinces, is that of a “delay caused by controls for the guarantee of product quality”.
Fortin blamed the delay in Moderna’s planned delivery on a “backlog with quality assurance.”
“It’s part of the manufacturing process, at the tail end of the manufacturing process, that they want to go through the proper quality assurance processes, and there’s a backlog,” he said last week. Unlike Pfizer, which sends its doses to Canada on a weekly basis, Modern’s supplies arrive in our country every two weeks. And while it is now established that the planned delivery seven days ago is expected to arrive in Canada this week, it is equally likely – as Fortin himself has suggested – that the expected deliveries in seven days’ time will be further delayed. According to the government’s roadmap, 1.2 million doses were expected to arrive in seven days’ time.
As far as Pfizer is concerned, however, everything is going according to what was previously established. More than 1 million doses will arrive this week too, and in this case there should be no delays.
Under the government’s contract with the US pharmaceutical giant, Canada is expected to receive at least one million doses a week throughout April. Then from May there will be a progressive increase in deliveries up to two million doses per week. As for AstraZeneca, however, no new deliveries are planned this week, while for the fourth vaccine approved by Health Canada, the one produced by Johnson and Johnson, the first supplies are expected to arrive at the end of the month.
For Canada, the stated goal is to reach the first of July with at least one dose of vaccine inoculated to all Canadians over the age of 18 who want to immunize themselves against Covid-19.
According to yesterday’s data from covid19tracker.ca, 10,620,740 doses have been delivered to Canada since January, which the federal government then distributed to the Provinces and Territories. Of these, 8,125,924 doses were administered.
In Ontario, 3,214,465 doses were inoculated out of a total of 4,031,325 delivered to provincial health authorities, or nearly 80 percent of the total.
Saskatchewan is the province that has shown the greatest efficiency, having already administered 85% of the doses received.
