OTTAWA — The federal government is ordering more than 75 million syringes, alcohol swabs and bandages so it can inoculate Canadians as soon as a COVID-19 vaccine is ready.
Procurement Minister Anita Anand says Ottawa intends to stockpile enough vaccine supplies to give at least two doses to every Canadian whenever a vaccine is available.
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There are almost two dozen vaccines in clinical trials around the world and at least 140 more in earlier stages of development, but most experts predict it will be well into 2021 before the first vaccines could be ready for wide use.
Quebec biopharmaceutical company Medicago began Canada’s first human COVID-19 vaccine trials July 13 and expects to have the initial results of its tests on 180 people by early fall.
Still, Anand says Canada wants to be ready and so has ordered 75.2 million each of syringes, alcohol swabs, bandages, and gauze pads, and 250,000 needle-disposal containers to be delivered no later than the end of October.
The contracts for the syringes are already in place but bids for the other supplies opened last week and will be accepted until the end of July.
Ottawa is also looking to transition its multibillion-dollar medical supplies purchase program from pandemic panic buying to longer-term planning. It is seeking a private company to take over the logistics of ordering, receiving, storing and distributing millions of face masks, respirators, surgical gowns and other personal protective equipment every month.
A request for bids for a logistics co-ordinator was posted July 16. The government wants a supplier that can procure or provide temperature-controlled warehouse space near Toronto and Hamilton airports, another near Montreal and a third in either British Columbia or Alberta. The winning bidder needs to be able to handle 27,000 pallets of supplies each month, as well as 220 shipping containers from cargo ships, and another 400 cases of other goods.
The frenzied global purchasing of COVID-19 medical supplies has dominated Public Services and Procurement Canada for months now.
Once described by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as the “wild west” of buying supplies, enormous demand for masks, gowns, gloves and hand sanitizer to respond to the pandemic turned into a season of Survivor in which governments needed to outwit, outplay and outlast others competing for the same goods.
The intensity of that process has relaxed slightly said Anand, but not enough that Canada is yet willing to disclose its international suppliers.
“We have to be careful not to put in jeopardy our supply chains,” she said.
“Where we believe the supply chain is still in jeopardy, in other words there is still intense global demand for a particular piece of PPE, it would not be prudent for us to reveal the names of suppliers as the competition is still very intense for that good.”
Canada has ordered millions of masks, gowns, gloves and other supplies to be delivered into 2021, and has accepted delivery of 99 planeloads of supplies to date.
In some cases, we did not need as much as we expected. More than 40,000 ventilators have been ordered, but not as many COVID-19 patients have needed ventilators as predicted. The 367 already delivered and the others on the way will be stored by Ottawa in case they are needed in future waves of the virus.
An agreement between Ottawa and the provinces means 80 per cent of what Ottawa buys it will turn around and ship to the provincial governments when they need it. The other 20 per cent is going into the “National Emergency Strategic Stockpile,” kept in a series of warehouses across Canada that store everything from medical supplies to temporary hospital cots and drugs to treat a variety of infectious diseases.
Ottawa is now asking for local warehouse owners in Ottawa to step up with space to expand the stockpile, which was found to be lacking last winter when Canada needed it most.
The country’s deputy chief public health officer Dr. Howard Njoo said Friday some “hard lessons” have been learned about the stockpile and Canada’s dependence on international sources to supply it.
He said it was always believed that the national stockpile and the supplies provinces had would be enough for an immediate emergency and whatever else the country needed could be ordered. That assumption proved very wrong when governments worldwide all needed the same things at the same time.
Before COVID-19, Canada had little ability to make much of what was needed here at home.
“We’ve also learned that we can’t in the future necessarily depend solely on global supply chains, we have to be more self sufficient,” he said.
“I certainly feel better, I think, about our situation, where we are now compared to let’s say back in January, February,” he said.
About 40 per cent of the supplies Canada needs are now being sourced in Canada, including, for the first time, testing swabs and N95 masks.
Anand said one of the key lessons is the need to make sure orders of supplies are distributed before they expire. Last year two million N95 masks kept in a warehouse in Regina were thrown out because they had expired. Those could have been used before the pandemic rather than wasted.
Anand said there is work ongoing to co-ordinate the federal procurement and provincial needs with the maintenance of a stockpile, and she said the same principle is being extended to other supplies, such as the vaccine equipment.
“Rest assured if those syringes are not used for vaccine, they are able to be used in other circumstances, for example, to administer the flu shot,” she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 18, 2020.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
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