OTTAWA —
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Tuesday that there will be enough COVID-19 vaccines coming into the country to offer every eligible and willing Canadian their first shot by this summer, and enough doses for everyone to be fully vaccinated “by September.”
“A one-dose summer sets us up for a two-dose fall, when we’ll be able to talk about going back to school, back to work, and back to more normality,” said the prime minister.
Touting Canada’s ranking among G20 countries when it comes to daily vaccination rates—while the overall percentage of the population that is fully vaccinated remains low—Trudeau said that while the country is not finished fighting COVID-19, nearly 50 per cent of eligible adults have received at least one shot.
“There is hope,” Trudeau said, but added that restrictions need to stay in place until at least 75 per cent of the population has at least their first shot and community transmission is better controlled through testing, tracing, and tamping down on spread.
“We can’t ease public health restrictions until cases are way down. We all want to have a summer where we can see our loved ones and invite friends over for BBQs. We can have that summer, we can have a one-dose summer,” said the prime minister. “That’s what I’m excited about.”
While supply challenges remain—currently with the AstraZeneca vaccine—that are prompting another course change in the delivery strategy in some regions, Canada is expecting to receive enough doses from other authorized providers for everyone to have had their first shot by the end of June.
As of last week, Procurement Minister Anita Anand’s office confirmed that by the end of June Canada is expecting to have cumulatively received between 48 and 50 million doses, and more than 100 million doses by the end of September.
The majority of those doses are from mRNA vaccine producers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, with enough doses secured of both to vaccinate the entire population with these two-dose vaccines.
In the first quarter of 2021 Canada received a total of 9.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca.
In the second quarter, which ends in June, Canada is expecting to receive a total of 24.2 million doses from Pfizer, between 10.3 and 12.3 million doses of Moderna, and 4.4 million doses of AstraZeneca.
In terms of the AstraZeneca commitment, it is a bit in limbo at the moment, with coming deliveries estimated at approximately 1.6 million doses from various contracts before the end of June but those shipments are not yet nailed down. Uncertainty remains over whether Health Canada will clear the use of the 300,000 Johnson & Johnson single-dose COVID-19 vaccines that have arrived but are undergoing additional safety reviews, or what will happen with future deliveries.