OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is thanking U.S. President Joe Biden for his “collaboration,” in offering to send Canada 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in a dose-sharing deal that’s still being solidified.
“Vaccines are the path out of this pandemic,” Trudeau said during a press conference of Friday. “We are finalizing an agreement on this with the American administration as we speak.”
As officials on both sides of the border confirmed Thursday, if the deal is inked, it’ll see the United States send 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada by the end of the month, under a loan agreement.
“We are working closely and very well with the Biden administration on many fronts, including vaccines. I want to thank president Biden for his collaboration,” he said, adding that working to send Canada more vaccine doses is something he and Procurement Minister Anita Anand have raised with their Washington, D.C. counterparts “a number of times.”
“Canada and the U.S. are each other’s closest friends and most important allies. I know we’ll continue working to keep Canadians and Americans safe,” the prime minister said.
In an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play on Thursday, Anand said she is anticipating the doses will be arriving this month, meaning that by the end of March, Canada should have a total of 9.5 million doses, up from the previous projection of 8 million doses total.
The expectation is that as part of the agreement, Canada and Mexico would pay the U.S. back with doses in return, in the months ahead.
Joining Trudeau for his press conference, Anand said Friday the doses are expected to have a minimum shelf life of 60 days.
Once they arrive, it’s likely they’d be sent across the country and provided to existing locations where the AstraZeneca vaccine is being administered, such as pharmacies.
“We are finalizing those details and I will share them with Canadians as soon as we have them,” said the procurement minister.
In total, the U.S. is looking to send 4 million of what White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called “releasable” doses to Mexico and Canada, from a stockpile of 7 million doses.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the regulatory agencies in Canada and Mexico have given it the green light, and Biden’s two North American neighbours have been pushing for more supply to immunize their populations quicker.
Speaking at a White House press briefing on Thursday, Psaki said the Biden administration’s priority remains ensuring the supply is there to vaccinate all American adults by the end of May, though that’s a target that country is set to be able to hit without doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
To date, the federal government has delivered more than 4.7 million vaccine doses to the provinces and territories, nearly 77 per cent of which have been administered, as the provinces continue to ramp up their rollout efforts.
In the months ahead, Canada will continue to receive larger shipments of vaccines in the push to immunize everyone who wants to be, by the end of September at the latest.
“Looking ahead, Canada is on track to receive a total of 36.5 million vaccines by the end of June, and 118 million doses by the end of September,” Anand said.
This plan has received several shots in the arms over the last few weeks after a sluggish start, with the latest update coming from Pfizer. That company is committed to sending more than a million doses every seven days through to the end of May.
Speaking to concerns raised by some provinces that certain coming shipments of the Moderna vaccine are being reduced, Anand said that because the coming deliveries include larger numbers of doses they are being divided into multiple deliveries but the total amount of doses going to each region will add up to the agreed-upon allocations in the end.
“Next week’s shipment of Moderna is a prime example. Rather than waiting until the end of the week to ship the entire order of 846,000 doses at once, it was decided to expedite the portion of the order that is ready, so that it arrives in Canada earlier,” she said.
