Canada reaches deal to buy 20M more doses of Pfizer vaccine
- by Virginia Carter
- in World Media
- — Jan 15, 2021
Health Minister Christine Elliott says the province has also detected eight more cases of the COVID-19 variant from United Kingdom, bringing the total number detected across Canada now to at least 22.
The government has set the goal of acquiring herd immunity against Covid-19 by November, before the seasonal flu outbreaks.
The extra doses will come from stores of the vaccines that were being held in reserve for booster doses, after the administration reversed its stance against releasing them.
As of January 7, almost 550,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been distributed across the country.
With less than a month left to start vaccination, concerns are also mounting about the variant strains, distribution process, and vaccination method, Jeong acknowledged.
It can take up to two weeks after a vaccine for the body's full immune response to be in place.
"Pfizer is ready for the virus change, and that is where the beauty of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology comes in", Hwang said.
Officials say, planned vaccinations will go ahead using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The Moderna vaccine will come slower, with 28,600 doses the week of February 1 and 31,000 doses the week of February 22.
Trudeau says Canada should see about 80 million doses of the vaccines arrive this year from Moderna and Pfizer alone.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Tuesday Ottawa was exercising the option under its contract with Pfizer to purchase another 20 million doses.
High street pharmacies such as Boots and Superdrug will begin offering the shots, with two hundred community drugstores due to be included over the next fortnight, joining hospitals, doctors' surgeries and seven large-scale centres in administering vaccines. "Around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site on an inaugural day", the PMO added.
