Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander leading Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine logistics, said today that manufacturers are expected to deliver up to one million doses a week starting in April.
In the spring, Fortin said, the country will shift from phase one of the vaccine rollout — immunizing particularly vulnerable people, such as long-term care home residents, some Indigenous adults and health care providers — to a wider rollout as deliveries become larger and more frequent.
The Canadian immunization campaign has gotten off to a slow start. A month into the inoculation efforts, barely one per cent of the population has received at least one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna products. Only 615,000 doses have been delivered to the provinces and territories.
The federal government is expecting up to six million doses — enough for three million people to be fully vaccinated using the Pfizer and Moderna two-dose products — by the end of March. But Fortin conceded Thursday the government is still negotiating a delivery schedule.
“We have a scarcity of vaccines in the first quarter,” Fortin said. April will mark the start of the what he’s calling the “ramp-up phase.”
The prospect of a million doses a week will be welcome news to provincial leaders who have been demanding more vaccine supply as COVID-19 cases spike.
While the vaccination campaign got off to a slow start, some provinces, notably B.C., Ontario and Quebec, have been fine-tuning their processes to administer doses faster.
“We have been sharing data with provinces and territories who, of course, understandably want more vaccines as they ramp up their vaccination programs. The challenge is we have limited quantities,” Fortin said. “The rub is right now … there’s perhaps a disappointment with the relatively small numbers that are being distributed,” Fortin said.
Other provinces are laggards. Tens of thousands of the doses the federal government has so far shipped are sitting in freezers. Manitoba and Nova Scotia have been particularly slow out of the gate, using less than half of the shots they have received.
Other promising vaccine candidates, such as those from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical division, Janssen, are currently being reviewed by regulators at Health Canada.
Asked how many doses of those vaccines could flow to Canada in the second quarter of this year, Fortin said he couldn’t say.
“We’re aware of planning figures. I’m not going to disclose them at this time because it’s subject to confidentiality agreements with the manufacturers,” he said. “We have an amount that’s been contracted, purchased pending regulatory approval. I can’t speak to dates of quantities at this time.”
He said doses will start “trickling into the country” if those products get the green light from Health Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday that as many as 20 million Canadians could be fully vaccinated between April and June. Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand’s office later clarified that that figure is dependent on other vaccines beyond the Moderna and Pfizer products being approved by regulators for use in Canada.
2nd vaccine dose could be delayed for up to 42 days: NACI
Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, also sought to clarify Thursday a recent report by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI).
That federal body, comprised of scientists and vaccine experts, said this week that provinces could accelerate the number of people being vaccinated by delaying the second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna shots for up to 42 days.
NACI said every effort should be made to follow the prescribed dosing schedules, but noted there can be exceptions, particularly when vaccine supplies are so hard to come by and the spread of the virus in a given jurisdiction is rapid.
Njoo said Canadian public health officials are still committed to administering the two-dose regime on the timeline recommended by manufacturers — three weeks after the first shot for the Pfizer product, or one month after the first shot for the Moderna vaccine.
Echoing NACI, he said there are legitimate reasons to delay some second shots
“In exceptional circumstances, jurisdictions may consider an extended interval between doses based on current and projected epidemiological status, health care system capacity and vaccine delivery and management logistics,” Njoo said.
Quebec, for example, has pushed off some doses to get more initial shots into the arms of patients faster as caseloads mount.
“The public health experts and authorities are looking at whether the interval can be increased and based on the available data … it is reasonable,” he said. “The principle of increasing the dosing interval is not as problematic.”
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.
