Ontario Premier, COVID-19 vaccine team to speak as Pfizer dose deliveries slow to halt – CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and members of his cabinet and vaccine distribution task force will speak Monday as the province enters the week without any new deliveries of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine.

Pfizer, the larger of two suppliers of two approved COVID-19 vaccines to Canada, said last week it would drastically reduce deliveries to the EU and Canada in February as it retools a manufacturing plant in order to boost its annual output by 700 million doses.

As a result, Canada will receive no Pfizer vaccine doses this week and between 66- 80 per cent fewer than expected doses for much of February.

However, the federal government says Ontario will receive more than 81,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine by Feb. 7.

News of the delivery slowdown has prompted the province to narrow its vaccination effort to long-term care homes and high risk retirement residences.

It has also prompted federal officials to allow a doubling of the gap between doses of the vaccine in certain circumstances.

Ford will be joined by Ret. Gen. Rick Hillier, Health Minister Christine Elliott and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones at Queen’s Park this afternoon.

Ford has taken to assorted insults and threats to vent his frustration over the Pfizer delivery slowdown, calling the company’s official excuse about retooling a Belgian manufacturing plant “crap.”

When speaking about the delays last week, Ford, in reference to an unnamed Pfizer executive, said that he’d be “up that guy’s ying-yang so far with a firecracker he wouldn’t know what hit him.”

He has repeatedly publicly appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to send Ontario one million of its Pfizer doses as a stop gap measure.

CP24 will broadcast Ford’s comments live at 1 p.m.

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