Canada’s vaccine portfolio: The announcement gives AstraZeneca – and its version from the Serum Institute of India – the latest Covid-19 vaccines, after Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, to receive the green light for use in the country.
The Trudeau government has ordered 20 million doses of AstraZeneca, which has not yet been approved in the United States. In January, the United Kingdom became the first country to use the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Canada is about to receive an additional 1.9 million doses of vaccine from the pharmacist through the global COVAX vaccine equality effort.
The government also announced on Friday that by mid-May it will receive 2 million doses from the Serum Institute of India. Purchasing Minister Anita Anand said that 500,000 doses of the Serum Institute vaccine will arrive in “the next few days and weeks”.
Health Canada estimated the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine to be 62.1 percent.
Delivery schedules: The Trudeau government assured Canadians that anyone who wants a vaccine will receive it by September.
Anand repeated this timeline on Friday, although he recently recognized that the approval of more vaccines could speed up this effort.
Trudeau said Canada will receive 6.5 million doses by the end of March and that tens of millions more injections are scheduled to arrive in the coming months.
“We are on the right track,” said the prime minister.
Canada vs Covid: Deputy public health officer Howard Njoo said on Thursday that 1.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines were administered in Canada. He said that 2.9 percent of Canadians received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 1.1 percent received two doses.
In comparison, the United States is vaccinating 1.5 million Americans a day.
Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech deliveries: Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is overseeing the military’s involvement in the distribution of the vaccine, said on Thursday that shipments of the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines are increasing, with 643,000 doses distributed across Canada this week.
He said that another 444,000 doses of Pfizer are expected weekly through March and 769,000 weekly in the first half of April.
By the end of March, Fortin said that Moderna will have delivered in its first quarter commitment of 2 million doses.
“As we move into spring, we are collectively preparing for what we call the acceleration phase,” he said.