TORONTO —
Canada is doing “quite well” in the global vaccine race, the president of Pfizer Canada says, despite a month-long slowdown that saw deliveries of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine drop off completely.
While more than 975,000 first doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been administered across the country over the last two months, amounting to less than three per cent of the population, other nations have far surpassed the Canadian speed. In the U.S., nearly 53 million doses have already been administered. In the U.K., now a global leader for immunizations, nearly a quarter of the population has been inoculated.
“We are actually doing quite well,” Cole Pinnow, president of Pfizer Canada, told CTV News Chanel on Tuesday.
“When you look at over 50 countries that Pfizer is contracted with, Canada is doing exceptionally well on deliveries. But what we’re trying to manage is a global supply chain to meet our obligations to all 50 countries.”
In January, the company announced shipments of its vaccine would slow down as it made changes to a facility in Belgium that could result in a production bump of up to 700 million doses. After a month-long delay of deliveries to Canada, Pfizer is expected to begin sending weekly shipments of more than 400,000 doses this week, lasting at least until early April.
Pinnow said the pharmaceutical giant is “confident” it will meet its target of four million doses delivered to Canada by the end of next month, noting that the company has moved up its timeline for all 40 million guaranteed doses to the end of September, instead of the end of the year.
Canada currently receives its doses from the Belgium facility, but some have suggested the government could turn to the U.S. state of Michigan, also home to a Pfizer production facility, for help with more doses. Pinnow acknowledged that the company is considering that as an option for the second part of 2021, but is confident that Belgium will satisfy the dosage needs for now.
Though Canada has faced criticism for its lack of domestic production capacity, Pinnow said that vaccine manufacturing is so complex — particularly with a product as innovative as the Pfizer mRNA vaccine — that there could have been “a bottleneck in the process” even with a Canadian facility in play.
“It’s important to note, regardless of who’s making which part of any given product, that there is a global supply chain and it’s really in all of our best interest to support open borders and open trade,” Pinnow said.
