Almost 2.2 million more vaccine doses coming this week as COVID-19 cases spike
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/04/2021 (1992 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA -More than two million doses of vaccines are set to arrive in Canada this week as the country scrambles to contain the wildfire spread of more contagious variants of the COVID-19 virus.
That includes the first batch of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines — 316,800 doses —to be sent to Canada from the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as the COVAX Facility.
Canada has contributed $440 million to COVAX, half to secure up to 15 million doses of vaccines for Canada and half to buy vaccines for poorer countries that can’t afford to purchase their own.
While any member country can draw on COVAX’s supplies for its own use, Canada has been heavily criticized for undermining the spirit of the COVAX initiative, which is to ensure vaccines are equitably distributed to poor countries.
In addition to the COVAX supply, Canada is to receive 1,019,070 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 855,600 doses of the Moderna vaccine over the next seven days.
That’s almost 2.2 million doses in total, following a peak of more than three million doses last week.
By the end of the first quarter, Canada had received a total of 9.5 million doses — ahead of the 6 million originally promised by the federal government despite production disruptions that slowed vaccine supply to a trickle in February and early March.
In the second quarter, Canada is set to receive at least one million doses of the Pfizer vaccine every week until the end of May, ramping up to two million a week in June.
It is on track to receive a total of 44 million doses of the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines by Canada Day.
The federal government is promising that every Canadian who wants to be inoculated against COVID-19 will be fully vaccinated by the end of September.
The vaccination ramp-up comes as COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing across the country.
Canada passed a grim milestone Saturday, recording more than one million cases of COVID-19 since the virus hit the country in January last year.
As of midday Sunday, 23,043 Canadians had died from the disease.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 5, 2021.
