The federal government has secured up to 168,000 doses of the Moderna Inc. (NYSE:MRNA) vaccine for COVID-19.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday (December 15) the doses could be delivered within 48 hours, pending a green light from Health Canada.
“This moves us even further forward on getting Canadians protected as quickly as possible,” Trudeau said during a media briefing in Ottawa.
The Moderna doses are expected to be delivered before the end of December, according to the prime minister.
Deliveries of the competing Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) began late Sunday in Canada, with the first vaccinations in B.C. set to be administered Tuesday.
The Pfizer vaccine requires that it’s maintained in freezers at temperatures as low as -80C, making it more difficult to handle and transport.
Those vaccines will be delivered directly by the manufacturer to the places of vaccination, initially in urban centres.
But because the Moderna vaccine is easier to transport — requiring freezing of only -20C — those will be prioritized for shipping in medical-grade freezers to Canada’s north as well as remote and Indigenous communities.
Ottawa has enlisted FedEx Express Canada Corp. and Innomar Strategies Inc. to deliver vaccines such as Moderna’s.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require that patients are dosed twice, with doses coming a recommended 21-28 days apart.
After much speculation Canada would be behind other countries in the rollout of vaccine, Ottawa revealed last week that up to 249,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to be delivered by the end of December.
Trudeau said 200,000 of those doses are expected to be in Canada by next week and administered at 70 sites across the country.
As of this week, the country is administering vaccines at 14 sites, including two in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
With some doses being delivered sooner than what was widely expected, Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand said during Tuesday’s briefing that the country is still paying fair market value for the vaccines.
And Trudeau said that because the federal government began negotiations with Moderna earlier that some other countries, it was able to secure a favourable spot in the distribution lineup.
Ottawa has secured or is in the midst of securing 429 million vaccine doses from seven companies for the country of 38 million.
The government will be ensuring that vaccines are distributed to 205 points of use across the country on a per capita basis as the vaccination plans scale up in the coming weeks and months.
The first 4,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in B.C. on Sunday, with more deliveries guaranteed for the next two weeks.
