(Ottawa) A slowdown in the arrival of vaccine doses in Canada against the Coronavirus is expected this week.
Approximately 600,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are expected to be shipped to Canada. Two million doses were due to arrive in the country over the next seven days, but 1.4 million doses were sent last week, ahead of the long Victoria Day or the Patriots Day holiday.
Biopharmaceuticals Pfizer and BioNTech have so far managed to deliver the promised doses, while other vaccine manufacturers have sometimes had difficulty keeping up with the pace of distribution.
The government of Canada expects to receive more doses of Moderna before the end of May, but authorities are currently unable to establish a timeline for the delivery and distribution of these doses.
Another million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca will likely be delivered before the end of June.
Meanwhile, Health Canada is continuing its analysis of the nearly 300,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that arrived last month. It has not yet been distributed due to possible contamination at the factory as it was produced in Baltimore, Maryland.
Over the weekend, Canadian officials reported that more than half of the country’s population had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.