The Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of Public Services and Procurement, announced that Canada has negotiated an accelerated delivery schedule for Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, and will receive all 40 million of its secured doses from Pfizer-BioNTech by the end of September.
This means that Canada will receive 2.8 million additional doses of Pfizer between April and June and an additional 6.2 million doses between July and September than was originally scheduled.
The Government of Canada has also purchased an additional 4 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, bringing the total number of secured doses to 44 million. The additional 4 million doses are expected to arrive by the end of September.
Canada is now expected to receive 84-million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines by the end of September 2021.
This means more people in Canada will be vaccinated sooner and also further protects Canada’s against supply chain disruptions so that we can provide a vaccine to everyone in Canada for whom these authorized COVID-19 vaccines are recommended by the end of September 2021.
To date, Canada has two approved vaccines to prevent COVID-19, which are being distributed across the country. The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was approved by Health Canada on December 9, 2020, and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was approved on December 23, 2020.
Canada is expected to receive a total of 6 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna before the end of March.
The Government of Canada has signed agreements with the following companies to secure access to their COVID-19 vaccine candidates:
• AstraZeneca, which will supply 20 million doses of its viral vector vaccine candidate AZD1222.
• Johnson & Johnson, which will supply up to 38 million doses of its viral vector vaccine candidate Ad26.COV2.S.
• Medicago, which will supply up to 76 million doses of its virus-like particle vaccine candidate.
• Moderna, which will supply 44 million doses of its mRNA vaccine candidate mRNA-1273.
• Pfizer, which will supply up to 76 million doses of its messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine developed with BioNTech, BNT162b2.
• Novavax, which will supply up to 76 million doses of its protein subunit vaccine candidate NVX-CoV2373.
• Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, which will supply up to 72 million doses of their protein subunit vaccine candidate. ■