FREDERICTON – Provinces in Atlantic Canada have had to dispose of thousands of doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in recent weeks after demand dried up and they expired.
Prince Edward Island announced this week it had disposed of 3,200 expired AstraZeneca doses, and Newfoundland and Labrador confirmed Thursday it has nearly 2,900 doses that will go to waste.
But an infectious disease specialist says the number of doses allowed to expire in Canada is a small price to pay to ensure there’s an adequate vaccine supply in the country.
Dr. Allison McGeer of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto said it is better to have too much of a particular vaccine than to turn people away because supply is lacking.
“We deliberately overbought vaccines, because we knew that with that many different vaccines coming, there were bound to be issues with one or more of them, and some of them we wouldn’t get at all,” McGeer said in an interview Thursday.
She said while provinces like Prince Edward Island doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that are going to waste after expiring earlier this month are a relatively tiny amount in a world that needs billions of doses. “We have worked hard across the country to not waste vaccines, but it is not realistic to think we are not going to waste some,” McGeer said.
Last month, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommended that people who received AstraZeneca for their first dose should get one of the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, for the second dose.
Canada’s Chief Public Officer of Health, Dr. Theresa Tam, said German studies show mixing vaccines is more effective than two AstraZeneca shots. And she said it would also mitigate any potential risk of the rare blood-clotting disorder known as VITT that has been linked to AstraZeneca.
Ron Ryder, a spokesman for the P.E.I. Health Department said the excess doses of AstraZeneca in his province were offered to other provinces before they expired.
“Since NACI changed their guidance on (AstraZeneca), there has been minimal uptake from Islanders for the (AstraZeneca) vaccine,” he said in a statement Thursday. “A limited supply has been kept on hand on P.E.I. for those who are unable to have an mRNA vaccine,”
Health officials in New Brunswick said they had 960 doses of AstraZeneca expire at the end of June, with another 10,300 doses set to expire at the end of August and 200 at the end of October.
“Until last month, we had not had any vaccine reach its expiry date before it could be administered,” Shawn Berry, a spokesman for the New Brunswick Health Department, said in a statement. He said the province is in discussions with the federal government to see about redistributing doses that are not required in New Brunswick.
The government in Newfoundland and Labrador was able to transfer 1,400 doses of AstraZeneca to Ontario in mid-May for use there as they neared their expiry date. However, the province had 2,848 doses of the vaccine expire at the end of June, Lesley Clarke, a spokeswoman for the Health Department said Thursday.
In Nova Scotia, health officials said they received 60,000 doses of AstraZeneca and had to dispose of just 299 that expired.
“At this time, Nova Scotia does not intend to order any further AstraZeneca given the low interest in the vaccine. For those with allergies related to the mRNA vaccines that may need to consider AstraZeneca, we will address those on a case-by-case basis,” Heather Fairbairn, a media relations adviser for the province said in a statement.
Elsewhere, Manitoba officials said they had to get rid of fewer than 550 of the 84,000 doses of AstraZeneca that were sent out for distribution.
In Alberta, health officials confirmed that due to decreased demand, 3,947 doses of AstraZeneca expired at the end of June. Government spokeswoman Lisa Glover noted the amount is a small fraction of the more than 292,000 doses administered to date.
“Emerging evidence about the effectiveness of receiving a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, either as a complete series or following a first dose of AstraZeneca, led to a sharp decline in Albertans seeking second doses of AstraZeneca,” she said.
On Monday, the federal government announced it would donate nearly 18 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to poorer countries. Procurement Minister Anita Anand said that after talking with the provinces, it was determined that the demand for the AstraZeneca vaccine had been met, and the remaining doses were excess supply.
Canada secured 20 million doses of AstraZeneca through an advance purchase agreement, but demand for the vaccine has dropped as the supply of mRNA vaccines increased.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 15, 2021.
– With files from Kelly Geraldine Malone in Winnipeg and Fakiha Baig in Edmonton.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
