Canada boosts vaccine order by tapping global pool originally set up for poorer nations - National Post

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Canada has struggled to maintain steady vaccine supplies, with early order volumes lagging those of peer countries, such as the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. Low initial order volumes have been exacerbated by production-related shortages in expected shipments from Pfizer and Moderna, the only two vaccines approved so far by Health Canada. Canada got no doses at all last week, and this week is getting only 20 per cent of what was promised from Pfizer and 80 per cent of what Moderna promised. Provinces and territories, which in mid-January got close to vaccinating 50,000 people a day, only vaccinated 5,000 people on Jan. 31.

Canada and other developed countries have been criticized for using their wealth and influence to snap up a majority of vaccines for themselves. COVAX was supposed to prevent that, and International Development Minister Karina Gould said Wednesday that Canada continues to support that goal, and that Ottawa was only drawing from the COVAX supply of doses available to donor countries.

“We’ve been clear from the start. Canada is strongly determined to vaccinate Canadians while making sure that the rest of the world is not getting left behind. Our participation into COVAX is a concrete example of that,” her office said in a statement. “Our contribution to the global mechanism had always been intended to access vaccine doses for Canadians as well as to support lower income countries.”

The World Health Organization recently asked wealthy countries to urgently start donating their surplus vaccine orders to COVAX for distribution to developing countries, where vaccination rates rank among the lowest in the world. “I urge countries that have contracted more vaccines than they will need, and are controlling the global supply, to donate and release them to COVAX immediately,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva last Friday. However, the Canadian government has said it is too early to commit to any such donations.

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2021-02-04 01:47:53Z
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