Between April 1 and Sept. 30 there are 26 weeks, meaning the provinces will have to put at least two million doses per week into the arms of Canadians
Author of the article:
Ryan Tumilty
Publishing date:
Feb 13, 2021 • 2 hours ago • 5 minute read
An Angus Reid poll released Friday showed 36 per cent of Canadians believe it will be 2022 before they have their COVID-19 vaccine shots.Photo by Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
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OTTAWA – Since last November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said all Canadians who want a COVID-19 vaccine will have one by September.
Trudeau, his ministers and MPs have all repeated that promise despite a slowdown in vaccine deliveries that has seen Canada fall behind the world for vaccinations during the last month. It’s a promise to Canadian voters and now a political liability should the government fail to deliver.
Trudeau repeated it again on Friday when he announced increases in scheduled deliveries from the two approved vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna. He pledged those companies will have delivered 84 million doses of vaccine by the end of September.
“We’re continuing to work every single day, at getting as many doses as possible, as quickly as possible, into Canadians arms,” he said.
But an Angus Reid poll released on Friday showed that just 28 per cent of Canadians are confident that the September number is achievable and 36 per cent of people believe it will be 2022 before they have their shot.
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In a meeting with health care workers Thursday, Trudeau called the coming months “the big lift,” an end to a period of vaccine scarcity and a new challenge to get millions of doses out and administered.
The math of Trudeau’s oft-repeated pledge is daunting.
From coast to coast to coast, approximately 38 million people call this country home, but not all of them can receive the two currently approved vaccines. Neither Pfizer nor Moderna tested their candidates in those under 16 leaving them off the list for shots for now. If children remain left out of the initial effort, the government will have seven million fewer arms in need of a vaccine.
That would leave 31 million Canadians waiting. Despite the rollouts early challenges, more than a million people have had at least one dose and if the government’s schedule holds, three million more people should be fully vaccinated by April, leaving 28 million to go. About 10 per cent of adult Canadians have told pollsters they will refuse a vaccine, that hesitancy has been in decline, but it is still likely to reduce demand by at least two million people.
All those reductions leave Canada with about 26 million people waiting for their shots, and all of them will need two doses. If vaccine hesitancy shrinks considerably or new research makes the case for providing them to children that number will grow.
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Between April 1 and Sept. 30 there are 26 weeks, meaning the provinces will have to put at least two million doses per week into the arms of Canadians. For Ontario, Canada’s largest province, that is nearly 110,000 shots per day — every single day — from April to the end of September.
Any weeks that don’t hit the target, either because of another slow down in deliveries or a failure by provinces to get the vaccine into arms, will increase the pressure on future weeks down the road.
The federal government could get more help if other vaccines in regulatory review, from Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and AstraZeneca are approved, but that will only increase supply of vaccines and increase the pressure on provinces.
The closest comparator to what provinces are faced with is the annual flu campaign. A ramped up effort this year dispensed 5.1 million shots of flu vaccine in Ontario, about a quarter of what Ontario will have to do for COVID. Alberta dispensed more than 1.5 million shots between late September and early February.
Stephen Warner, a spokesperson for the Ontario government, insisted they were ready for more COVID vaccines.
“Ontario currently has the capacity to vaccinate nearly 40,000 people per day, and we are building to triple or quadruple that capacity to reach all Ontarians as quickly as possible,” he said in an email to the National Post.
After finishing with long-term care homes and health care workers, the Ontario government is planning large vaccination sites in the second phase of its plan and believes it can vaccinate as many as 150,000 people every day.
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“Over the coming months, those sites will include municipally run vaccination sites, hospital sites, mobile vaccination sites, pharmacies, clinics, primary care settings and community locations such as community health centres and aboriginal health access centres,” Warner said. “We are working to ensure these sites are ready by late winter in time for phase two to begin.”
We are well aware at all levels of scope and size of what we will face in the coming weeks and months
Warner said Ontario is waiting only for the federal government to get deliveries to them before it ramped up.
“As soon as we have confidence in steady supply and regular deliveries from the federal government we’ll continue to ramp up.”
Nova Scotia said it has a flexible system capable of scaling up when vaccine deliveries increase.
“Our clinics are able to ramp up or ramp down to ensure vaccines continue to flow into arms as we wait for regular shipments to increase,” said health department spokesperson Marla MacInnis.
Pfizer will deliver 403,000 doses next week and in the following week they will ship 475,000 doses. Moderna is sending a reduced shipment to Canada that week, but still expects to deliver 168,000 doses.
The government has pledged a total of 23 million doses will be delivered between April and June and with a further ramp up in the summer to deliver the 55 million remaining doses in Pfizer and Moderna’s contracts.
Early in January, provinces struggled to keep pace with federal deliveries and vaccines were stuck in freezers. Maj.-Gen Dany Fortin, who is overseeing the distribution plan, said he is confident the provinces are ready.
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“We are well aware at all levels of scope and size of what we will face in the coming weeks and months. Provinces are assuring us that they have good plans in place,” he said.
After a regulatory change this week, Pfizer’s vials are recognized to have an extra dose, but getting it will require a special syringe. Fortin said those are arriving in the millions every week.
“We continue to distribute as they become available to provinces, so that they are able to administer as effectively as possible six doses of vaccines and will continue to pay attention to distribution to the right place at the right time.”
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Tesla has promised to start selling cheaper models next year, days after a Reuters report revealed that the company had shelved its plans for an all-new Tesla that would cost only $25,000.
The news that Tesla was scrapping the Model 2 came amid a drop in sales and profits, and a decision to slash a tenth of the company’s global workforce. Reuters also noted increased competition from Chinese EV makers.
Tesla’s deliveries slumped in the first quarter for the first annual drop since the start of the pandemic in 2020, missing analyst forecasts by a mile in a sign that even price cuts haven’t been able to stave off an increasingly heated competition on the EV market.
Profits dropped by 50%, disappointing investors and leading to a slump in the company’s share prices, which made any good news urgently needed. Tesla delivered: it said it would bring forward the date for the release of new, lower-cost models. These would be produced on its existing platform and rolled out in the second half of 2025, per the BBC.
Reuters cited the company as warning that this change of plans could “result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected,” however. This suggests the price tag of the new models is unlikely to be as small as the $25,000 promised for the Model 2.
The decision is based on a substantially reduced risk appetite in Tesla’s management, likely affected by the recent financial results and the intensifying competition with Chinese EV makers. Shelving the Model 2 and opting instead for cars to be produced on existing manufacturing lines is the safer move in these “uncertain times”, per the company.
Tesla is also cutting prices, as many other EV makers are doing amid a palpable decline in sales in key markets such as Europe, where the phaseout of subsidies has hit demand for EVs seriously. The cut is of about $2,000 on all models that Tesla currently sells.
Divisions within the Bank of Canada over the timing of a much-anticipated cut to its key overnight interest rate stem from concerns of some members of the central bank’s governing council that progress on taming inflation could stall in the face of stronger domestic demand — or even pick up again in the event of “new surprises.”
“Some members emphasized that, with the economy performing well, the risk had diminished that restrictive monetary policy would slow the economy more than necessary to return inflation to target,” according to a summary of deliberations for the April 10 rate decision that were published Wednesday. “They felt more reassurance was needed to reduce the risk that the downward progress on core inflation would stall, and to avoid jeopardizing the progress made thus far.”
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Others argued that there were additional risks from keeping monetary policy too tight in light of progress already made to tame inflation, which had come down “significantly” across most goods and services.
Some pointed out that the distribution of inflation rates across components of the consumer price index had approached normal, despite outsized price increases and decreases in certain components.
“Coupled with indicators that the economy was in excess supply and with a base case projection showing the output gap starting to close only next year, they felt there was a risk of keeping monetary policy more restrictive than needed.”
In the end, though, the central bankers agreed to hold the rate at five per cent because inflation remained too high and there were still upside risks to the outlook, albeit “less acute” than in the past couple of years.
Despite the “diversity of views” about when conditions will warrant cutting the interest rate, central bank officials agreed that monetary policy easing would probably be gradual, given risks to the outlook and the slow path for returning inflation to target, according to the summary of deliberations.
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They considered a number of potential risks to the outlook for economic growth and inflation, including housing and immigration, according to summary of deliberations.
The central bankers discussed the risk that housing market activity could accelerate and further boost shelter prices and acknowledged that easing monetary policy could increase the likelihood of this risk materializing. They concluded that their focus on measures such as CPI-trim, which strips out extreme movements in price changes, allowed them to effectively look through mortgage interest costs while capturing other shelter prices such as rent that are more reflective of supply and demand in housing.
They also agreed to keep a close eye on immigration in the coming quarters due to uncertainty around recent announcements by the federal government.
“The projection incorporated continued strong population growth in the first half of 2024 followed by much softer growth, in line with the federal government’s target for reducing the share of non-permanent residents,” the summary said. “But details of how these plans will be implemented had not been announced. Governing council recognized that there was some uncertainty about future population growth and agreed it would be important to update the population forecast each quarter.”
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Shares in US tech giant Meta have sunk in US after-hours trading despite better-than-expected earnings.
The Facebook and Instagram owner said expenses would be higher this year as it spends heavily on artificial intelligence (AI).
Its shares fell more than 15% after it said it expected to spend billions of dollars more than it had previously predicted in 2024.
Meta has been updating its ad-buying products with AI tools to boost earnings growth.
It has also been introducing more AI features on its social media platforms such as chat assistants.
The firm said it now expected to spend between $35bn and $40bn, (£28bn-32bn) in 2024, up from an earlier prediction of $30-$37bn.
Its shares fell despite it beating expectations on its earnings.
First quarter revenue rose 27% to $36.46bn, while analysts had expected earnings of $36.16bn.
Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said its spending plans were “aggressive”.
She said Meta’s “substantial investment” in AI has helped it get people to spend time on its platforms, so advertisers are willing to spend more money “in a time when digital advertising uncertainty remains rife”.
More than 50 countries are due to have elections this year, she said, “which hugely increases uncertainty” and can spook advertisers.
She added that Meta’s “fortunes are probably also being bolstered by TikTok’s uncertain future in the US”.
Meta’s rival has said it will fight an “unconstitutional” law that could result in TikTok being sold or banned in the US.
President Biden has signed into law a bill which gives the social media platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell off the app or it will be blocked in the US.
Ms Lund-Yates said that “looking further ahead, the biggest risk [for Meta] remains regulatory”.
Last year, Meta was fined €1.2bn (£1bn) by Ireland’s data authorities for mishandling people’s data when transferring it between Europe and the US.
And in February of this year, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced blistering criticism from US lawmakers and was pushed to apologise to families of victims of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Lund-Yates added that the firm has “more than enough resources to throw at legal challenges, but that doesn’t rule out the risks of ups and downs in market sentiment”.
