TORONTO / OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada expects enough doses of COVID-19 vaccine to double its supply by the end of next week to help ramp up a slow vaccination program as infectious viral changes push the country to towards a third wave of coronavirus diseases.
Canada has weakened other rich countries in inoculations even though it ordered enough doses to give the population the vaccine five times late last year.
These supply contracts, however, promised very few doses in the first quarter of 2021 with a sharp increase in the second quarter. Officials said Friday that 6.8% of the population had received at least one photo of a vaccine. That compares with 24.5% of U.S. residents since Monday.
Shipment of 4.7 million doses is expected this week and next week – 2.4 million from Pfizer Inc, 846,000 from Moderna Inc and a 1.5 million-dose loan of AstraZeneca vaccine from the United States, according to federal forecasts and announcements recently.
Future deliveries could be jeopardized if the European Union terminates shipments from Pfizer or Moderna operations in Europe that supply Canada. Canada has been told that European exports will be allowed, a spokeswoman for International Trade Minister Mary Ng said on Wednesday.
Ng’s peers in Europe “have been confident that these measures will not affect vaccine behavior in Canada,” said Youmy Han.
A Pfizer spokesman said export licenses had already been issued for delivery this week and next, and one had been requested for the week of April 5. Canada expects a million doses a week. weeks from Pfizer through the end of May.
Rising shipping and a policy to delay second sightings of the country’s two-dose vaccines will allow it to ramp up major vaccine sites and some pharmacy circulation programs for older residents – two months after the United States.
“It really brings a sense of relief,” said Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital and a member of Ontario’s vaccine distribution action group.
Canada is facing the third wave of potential infections as the more susceptible B.1.1.7 virus variant first discovered in the UK is driving the spread of -out in some hot places.
The country received just under 4.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines between the end of December and March 17th.
Canada extends vaccine supply by offering second doses as long as four months after the first, which means Canadians have to wait longer than U.S. residents to receive the vaccine . In the United States, the second view of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine will be given three weeks after the first, and the Moderna four weeks, as a mirror of dosing records in their clinical trials.
“We’re going to be in a very strange situation in Canada where some months will have zero doses of vaccine, some people will have one dose, and some people will have two doses,” Bogoch said. “I think we need very pragmatic advice from a federal centralized source on what is appropriate. ”
The National Advisory Council on Vaccination (NACI), which makes non-binding but influential recommendations on how regional health systems should use vaccines, said modeling a delay in the second dose would reduce illness and death while the supply of the vaccine would be limited.
“It makes a lot of sense to try to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible,” said Catherine Hankins, a McGill University epidemiologist and co-chair of another federal advisory group, the COVID-19 Immunization Task Force. .
“I am convinced by looking at the data from other countries which shows that it will be quickly distributed to the largest number of people with the greatest impact,” she said.
Reporting with Allison Martell in Toronto and Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Edited by Bill Berkrot