Why Canada May Not Get the COVID-19 Vaccine Soon
- by Lorene Schwartz
- in People
- — Nov 28, 2020
There are three leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates that have shown strong results in clinical trials and are now working through the Health Canada approval process.
Trudeau said they had the biggest and the best plan, just that the plan would be late.
Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said the delay will mean more hardship for Canadians.
So while vaccinations might start next month in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, it will be January at the earliest before any doses are injected in this country.
It is supposed to be able to produce two million doses a month before the end of 2021.
Opposition MPs are growing tired of the lack of specific information the federal Liberals are providing on the vaccine plan. "Other nations will be getting back to normal while we are twiddling our thumbs waiting for vaccine", he said.
For some time now, Canada's top health officials and the Prime Minister have been assuring Canadians that hundreds of millions of doses of the potential new COVID-19 vaccines have been secured.
Canada has begun funding domestic vaccine production capacity but Trudeau has said it will take "years" to get in place and likely won't help Canada's COVID-19 vaccine situation, but will be in place should there be future pandemics.
Trudeau said Canada's doses would follow shortly after, and he expects to see them in the first quarter of next year.
"One of the things to remember is Canada no longer has any domestic production capacity for vaccines".
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In a tweet shared on November 26, the NDP leader said Trudeau had failed to "fix" the issues caused by the Conservative Party in years gone by.
Medicago CEO Bruce Clark said the company has been able to adapt a vaccine for influenza to target COVID-19 instead, noting such an adaptation is one of the advantages of biologic vaccines.
To date, Canada has final agreements with five vaccine manufacturers - Pfizer, Moderna, GlaxoSmithKline, Medicago and AstraZeneca - and is finalizing agreements with Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. The U.K. did not place an order until earlier this month. Given Canada's limitations, Casey said, buying access to as many doses as possible from other countries was a good move.
AstraZeneca, who partnered with Oxford University, are using a type of vaccine technology that could have been manufactured at the Montreal facility if construction had been completed.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner demanded in question period to know if Canada had even negotiated for the right to make vaccines domestically.
This comes as the federal government faces pressure from provinces and opposition parties to come up with a clearer timeline for the distribution. "So it's really incumbent on the prime minister to stand up for Canada, and make sure that we get our share of the vaccines during the timeframes that they originally stated". On Tuesday, Public Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Canada has a number of contracts with various suppliers for more doses per capita than any country in the world.
"I think we can withstand being behind the Americans and the Germans".
He said that is why the government bought doses of so many potentially successful vaccines, and why it is reinvesting in domestic manufacturing.
The Trudeau government was advised not to try to rely on its own manufacturing capacity.
