Canada stands to receive more Pfizer doses in the next quarter than expected; a promising development for a country grappling with vaccine shortages for weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today.
The pharmaceutical giant will deliver 10.8 million shots between April and June as the manufacturing supply chain stabilizes after a shaky start to the year, the prime minister added.
Four million more Moderna doses will also arrive in the second quarter, Trudeau said — two developments that mean more Canadians can get shots faster.
Pfizer and Moderna, the two leading suppliers of vaccines, have been fine tuning their operations in recent weeks to meet insatiable global demand with new COVID-19 variants taking hold.
The federal government has long promised six million patients will be fully vaccinated with a two-dose vaccine regime in the first three months of this year.
Pfizer is on track to deliver its promised four million doses while Moderna continues to make “assurances” that it will hit its target of two million shots in Canada by the end of March, Trudeau said. Roughly 1.4 million doses of both shots have been delivered so far.
20 million more Canadians will get shots in the second quarter while all who want a shot will get one by the end of September, the prime minister said.
“We’re absolutely on track,” he said.
While Pfizer deliveries have been limited over the last month, owing to plant upgrades at its site in Belgium, the company has said it will send hundreds of thousands of doses to Canada weekly for the foreseeable future.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander leading vaccine logistics, said more than 400,000 shots will arrive next week.
