COVID-19 vaccines continue to roll into Canada, albeit slower than the federal government initially expected.
The military general leading the country’s vaccine rollout program provided an update on Thursday.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin said 79,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived this week, and they expect 70,000 more next week.
“Pfizer has indicated that it would be scaling up shipments starting in February to meet their target of four million doses by the end of March,” said Fortin.
The company is forecasting shipments of at least 335,000 doses the week of Feb. 15 and 395,000 the last week of February, he said.
In early January, Pfizer announced it was temporarily cutting the number of vaccine doses being delivered as it expanded one of its facilities to meet global demand.
Meanwhile, Canada is seeing fewer doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine than originally promised by the company.
Fortin said they were expecting 230,000 doses this week but only received 180,000 — a decrease of just over 20 per cent.
He said they also anticipate the next shipment, which is scheduled for Feb. 22, will contain fewer than the 249,000 Moderna had promised.
“The quantities that we expect to receive remain to be confirmed by the manufacturer, so at this time I can’t really tell you what the quantity will be, but we do not expect to receive 249,000 at this time,” said Fortin.
Fortin said Moderna has not shared specifics of any challenges it may be facing.
“Moderna has indicated that they are in good faith trying their best to provide as many doses as possible as fairly and equitably to their market and this global demand,” he said.
Nearly 1.2-million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed to provinces and territories to date, according to Fortin.
