The Massachusetts-based company was set to send some 230,400 shots to Canada next week, with 249,600 shots to follow three weeks later, but those forecasts have now been upended, a testament to just how uncertain the government’s vaccine projections have become. Moderna is expected to ship between 20-25 per cent less product to Canada in February than originally planned.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to reassure the public that the pace of vaccinations will pick up as spring draws near.
„This temporary delay doesn’t change the fact that we will still receive two million doses of the Moderna vaccine before the end of March, as we’ve been saying for months,” he said. „We know that this is something that we’re going to have to keep watching very, very closely.”
This is the second time in less than a month that Canada has had to contend with delivery delays from a pharmaceutical company. Pfizer is shipping roughly 80 per cent fewer shots than it initially promised over the next four weeks as it grapples with the fallout from upgrades to its manufacturing plant in Puurs, Belgium.
Despite Trudeau’s assurances, the delays mean that Canada will struggle to meet its target of six million Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots delivered by the end of March. To meet that target, more than 3.5 million doses of the two products will have to be delivered in the month of March alone — or roughly 885,000 doses a week.
Beyond the two products already approved, Health Canada regulators are reviewing the clinical trial data for the AstraZeneca vaccine, and a promising vaccine candidate from Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical division, Janssen.
The EU’s medicines agency on Friday approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, a shot that was co-developed with researchers at the University of Oxford. Health Canada is expected to make a decision about the AstraZeneca product „in the coming days,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
