Front Burner - Why has Canada's COVID-19 vaccine rate slipped globally?

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

As of Sunday, Canada had fallen to 27th in the world in vaccines administered, behind the U.S., the U.K. and smaller countries like Poland and Serbia, according to data aggregated by the University of Oxford. Canada was one of the first countries in the world to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for use and have reserved record doses per person — but the country is facing significant shipment delays. There are also growing questions about whether the vaccine contracts signed by the federal government are in the country's best interest, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assures the public that Canada is on track to meet its vaccination goals. Today on Front Burner, CBC News senior writer J.P. Tasker discusses why Canada is falling behind and what might be done about it.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. I'm with my colleague, CBC Parliamentary reporter and very good friend of the pod, J.P. Tasker. Hey J.P., thanks so much for being here. Hey Jamie. So J.P., according to the latest data from the University of Oxford, which is tracking all this stuff, we rank 27th as of Sunday when it comes to getting vaccines in

people's arms globally. I remember at the beginning of January, we did an episode on the vaccine rollout and we were ninth back then. I think most Canadians would look at that ranking and find it a bit cringeworthy. I was writing about this last week, we were 20th and I thought there's no way we're going to get worse than that. But yeah, we've slipped seven spots in the last four days. And we, we have the dubious honor of being in a five way tie for 27th right now in terms of the number of shots we've administered per capita. Right. So so I want to talk to you about that today, because it is now becoming glaringly obvious that we are also crashing up against a supply issue. When we talked about this back in January, I remember it was about sort of a slow rollout of the vaccines that we did have.

But now it doesn't matter how slowly we're rolling out the vaccines. We don't have enough vaccines to administer. So let's get right to it. All right, JP. So as of of today you and I are talking on Sunday afternoon what is the national picture like how many doses do we have so we've already administered about a million shots about 950,000 give or take have already been administered to this point so two just over two percent of the Canadian population has received at least one shot and we're about six weeks into this campaign. So patience is definitely wearing a bit thin Jamie, you know, we just passed the 20,000 people dead mark. So there's an insatiable demand for these shots. And we really have not had a lot of wind in our sails to this point. Right, right. And what do we know about where we are right now with the amount

of shots that we have? Well, we've been thrown some curveballs, right, over the last month. I mean, Pfizer shut down its manufacturing lines at its plant in Belgium. They've been offline for a couple weeks. Is retooling to be able to produce even more vaccines. The pharmaceutical giant hopes to increase overall production of its vaccination to 2 billion doses in 2021. That retooling has really had an impact on Canada's deliveries. They've plummeted over the last two weeks

and the next two weeks aren't going to be much better. I mean, just last week, we didn't get a single vial to our country, not one. And that's going to force health authorities to cancel or delay vaccination appointments for people like frontline health care workers. Ontario's premier dropping some colorful language. I'd be on that phone call every single day. I'd be up that guy's yin yang so far with a firecracker. He wouldn't know what hit him from Pfizer. And then Moderna, too, the latest news on Friday. That's another hurdle we're dealing with. They're slashing deliveries to Canada this week as well,

about 25% decline in terms of how much we can expect in the month of February. Other countries face similar rationing as Moderna tends to a problem with its manufacturing process. So all of this bad news is not great, but the government keeps insisting we're on track to meet the target that they've set many months ago now. they still expect to get about 6 million doses. 1.1 million so far have been delivered about 1.4 million in February, that's two and a half million, that means three and a half million doses have to be delivered in the month of March alone from both Pfizer and

Moderna to meet that target. So that's 885,000 a week on average in that month. And Trudeau seems optimistic that that's going to happen. He's basically saying that this is like a small setback and that this will all ramp up and we're going to get these by the end of March. The companies are respecting the contracts that we've signed. And Trudeau says these doses are merely delayed, not cancelled. With every Canadian who wants to get vaccinated able to get vaccinated by September. And so

it sounds to me like you are not as optimistic as the Prime Minister. Well, it's just a gargantuan task. If we're to believe the government, our system's going to go from handling 79,000 this week to nearly 10 times that amount only a month later. So a lot of people are really skeptical about those numbers at this point. But yeah, he's doubling down, tripling down on that number 6 million by the end of March, despite all the hiccups, you know, they say, yeah, there might be some interruptions to our deliveries, but we're still sticking with the medium term targets. A lot of public health people are going to find it

really difficult to pump through that many people in the month of March alone when our system, it just isn't used to it at this point. Right. And right now, because of these delays, are we seeing provinces saying, you know, right now, we could be administering more vaccines, but we don't have the vaccines to administer. Yeah, actually, the provinces have kept pace with the number of shots that have been coming into this point, they've done a fairly good job of getting them out. I mean, initially, we had some concerns about shots sitting in the freezers and not being used and all that sort of thing. That hasn't been happening the last number of weeks, all the provinces and territories have basically been using up all the supply they have on hand. So that's been good. But the provinces and territories have basically been using up all the supply they have

on hand. So that's been good. But the problem is now because of all these supply disruptions that we're experiencing from Pfizer and now from Moderna, they're going to have to stop with some of the initial shots. They're going to have to hold back some of the supply so that they can get that second dose into people who've already had the first go around. Right, right. So essentially, these are these potential domino effects that we'll see from the shortages that that we're seeing in the next couple of weeks. How about other countries, JP? Have they been experiencing these shortages too from Pfizer and Moderna? Well, it's rather comical for me, at least to read the headlines in the American press about their vaccination campaign. You know, it's, it's a disaster. It's a complete mess. You see these things splashed across the headlines.

U.S. is stumbling out of the gate, in particular, in the distribution of vaccines. Nowhere close to Operation Warp Speed's goal. There's still these bottlenecks in the system. And yet they've vaccinated 24 million people already. If that's a mess, what does that make Canada? You know, the Americans are up to three and a half times more people per capita than Canada. So even when you account for population size, the Americans are way ahead. has already received at least one shot. And as I said, in Canada, it's about 2.2%. So, you know, we're being beat by rich countries and poor countries, major industrial economies, small island nations. You know, there's a huge long list. At 27th in the world, there are many people ahead of us.

I want to dig into that a little bit more in one moment. But are any of these countries, did they also experience shortages from Pfizer and Moderna? Or is it just us? Yeah, so the European Union experienced some shortages as well. When Pfizer had to take that plant offline, essentially, they stopped shipping to both Canada and to most countries in the European Union. The president of the European Commission insisted Pfizer will make up for the delays by the month of March. I immediately called the CEO of Pfizer. But as of last Thursday, the plant is back up and running. So they expect to have normal deliveries to the EU countries starting this week.

That is not happening in Canada. We are not being treated the same as a customer by Pfizer because we will have to wait until the middle of February for us to get back to some of a more normal deliveries to start again. February 15th is when Canada expects to get back on track as to how many shots we were initially expecting. So no, we are not being treated the same. The European Union, for whatever reason, has been able to negotiate with Pfizer a resumption of normal deliveries earlier than we have here.

Okay. And just jumping back to the fact that we're 27th here, you know, this picture that you painted of the UK and the US in particular, doing so much better than Canada, but also other countries, right? Serbia, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Seychelles, I hear as well. Although I imagine there are some reasons for this. And I wonder if we could talk about them, you know, why are these countries doing better than Canada, even though we have reserved more doses of vaccine per person than any other country in the world. And we were one of the very first countries to approve both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. Well, I mean, some of them are just smaller

countries, so it's easier to do. But also Canada's orders, you mentioned such a big portfolio, a lot of those orders are backdated, you know, those are those are coming towards the end of the year. So they're coming in the second, third or fourth quarters, a lot of them were not earmarked for the first couple months of 2021. So that means the contracts that we've signed, you know, we're going to be flooded, hopefully flooded with shots in the middle of the year. But as it is right now, it's just pretty paltry in terms of the number we're getting. We are beating two G7 countries. I think it's important to point that out. France, you know, is in the throes of a bureaucratic mess right now. They have regulations there that make these kind of vaccination campaigns really difficult.

As of January 1st, only 516 people had received a jab. Germany administered nearly 200,000 doses. A lot of doctors and nurses and members, a lot of them are saying quite simply, too much paperwork. Japan hasn't started its vaccination campaign yet at all. But they've actually had a few cases there. There are less than 6,000 people dead in a country of 126 million. So I mean, some countries are doing better because they have domestic manufacturing capacity as well. I mean, some countries are doing better because they have domestic manufacturing capacity as well. I mean, I mentioned Japan, they haven't started yet, but they just inked a deal with AstraZeneca to build or to manufacture like millions of shots

there at home for their market. So they have that advantage. And other countries have that too. Canada does not have domestic manufacturing rights to any of the promising candidates that have been approved. My understanding is the UK and the US both have domestic manufacturing capacity. They do. Yeah. So the United States, of course, world leader in pharmaceuticals has a massive plant from Pfizer in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They did not face any of the disruptions that has happened at the Belgian plant. So they've been just pumping out shots left, right and center. Most of the Moderna product is manufactured in the United States as well. They have a plant in Switzerland, but also two in Massachusetts and one in New Hampshire. So they've been able to rely on that steady supply

from the domestic source. And the United Kingdom too, of course, is home to AstraZeneca and AstraZeneca co-developed that vaccine with the University of Oxford. So they've had a head start on that. They also were first out of the gate to approve AstraZeneca. That still hasn't been done yet in the country. So they've been helped immensely by having many millions more shots on hand this month. I wonder though, JP, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Is there something or a few things that some of these countries have done that Canada could have done that they haven't? Well, I mentioned securing the domestic manufacturing rights. That is a big problem

for our country. So essentially, Canada passed on the opportunity to manufacture AstraZeneca here at home. So we kind of passed up on that opportunity. And a lot of it is traced back to a collaboration we did with China in the early days of this pandemic. We kind of put some of our, many of our eggs in the one basket to start by partnering with CanSino, which is a Chinese firm. The National Research Council is starting to lay the groundwork for clinical trials of a candidate vaccine that's already received Chinese approval. It could be Canada's first shot at getting a vaccine for COVID-19. And we are really hoping that we could make those shots both in Canada and in China,

and hope that that would be further along than it is. Of course, the Chinese government being unpredictable, pulled the export permits for the vaccine. So they couldn't actually be sent here to Canada for clinical trials. So we really had to scramble in the summer months of 2020 to secure doses from other from other companies and other countries. And that has really left us completely reliant on on foreign companies and foreign countries to send us product. Right. But what about the negotiation of these contracts to bring in vaccines? So, you know, Public Services Minister Anita Anand told the Canadian press in December that Canada was the fourth country in the world to sign a contract with Pfizer and the first to sign with Moderna. Moderna has publicly confirmed that Canada is at the head of the line for its vaccine doses. But I also can't help but think about Israel, which is also bringing

vaccines in from the outside, and they seem to have gotten way more vaccines than Canada. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was first getting the vaccine live on primetime Israeli television. I thought it was important to set a personal example so all Israelis would go and vaccinate themselves. Yeah, well, we don't know what we've signed for with the contracts. We haven't actually seen the contract. So we don't know what the delivery schedules are like for the next six, seven, eight months. You know, we've been told 6 million by the end of March, 70 million by the end of September, but that's about it. So Aaron O'Toole, the conservative leader in the House of Commons, of course, wants the federal government to release those contracts so that MPs can scrutinize them, go over the details, see what we've actually signed to. We don't need the commercial information in the contract. We need the timelines. When we have zero vaccines this week and up until just the last 24 hours,

next week the plan said unknown. That's not a plan. We need transparency on when people can expect to be vaccinated. We don't know how much we've paid for these shots. So as you mentioned, Israel is likely paying more than any other country on earth at this point. From what we can tell, they're paying about $47 a shot for the Pfizer product. That's a lot more than, for example, what the United States has negotiated.

They're only paying $20 for Pfizer. The EU is paying less than $15. But our bureaucrats here have, you know, kept this behind closed doors, there has been no public aspect to these negotiations, we don't really know when things will be coming in what order and how much we've paid and whether these are going to be coming from European plants exclusively as they are now, or is there an option to get some of the Pfizer shots from the Kalamazoo, Michigan plant? We don't know if that's even baked into the contract at this point. Every time we ask about the possibility of that, especially with the threat of these EU export

controls, the government says, well, that's not an option. We can't go to Kalamazoo. We can't get those Michigan shots because they're all destined for the American market in the first quarter. But what about the second and third quarter? Is that an option? Did we sign that in? You know, we don't know these details. So the vacuum has created a lot of anxiety among observers who want to make sure that we have the best thing going for our country right now. And it's just not clear that we do. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples.

Look, JB, I just want to know, we're having this conversation and it's like, it feels so competitive, right, between all of these countries. And I just want to note that there are people who think that the entire way that the world is being vaccinated is the wrong way here. Like having all these individual companies with patents negotiate with individual countries, instead of this more sort of collaborative global approach that leverages, you know, manufacturing capacity around the world. But that is not the reality that we are operating in. So I do want to ask you today about the possibility of at least some more cooperation. I know that French drug maker Sanofi has signed a deal

to produce the Pfizer vaccine now, although it's only going to start in the summer. Like, could we see more of these partnerships? Is it possible that this could sort of move the needle and result in more vaccines? You're so idealistic. I love it. Yeah, so I mean, it is encouraging that two major drug makers, Sanofi in France and Novartis actually as well in Switzerland, they've agreed to produce the Pfizer products. Sanofi was trying to develop its own shot with GlaxoSmithKline, another major British company, but they had a lot of problems. The clinical trials have been delayed.

So they're going to actually help out in this effort by switching gears a bit and going with something that works. They've said they can do up to 125 million doses this year. So that's good. But from what I can tell, most of those shots will be destined for the European market alone. And they won't be coming, as you say, until the second or third quarter. So it will certainly help with global supply in the long term, take some pressure off that Pfizer plant in Belgium that is really supplying the world other than the United States. But it will be I think, of limited use to Canada

in the long run to have the Santa Fe and Novartis partnerships, but it's certainly encouraging, you know, I think some people are saying, let's put down our arms, let's stop trying to develop our own COVID-19 vaccine and just go with things that have a proven track record. And I think really, you're going to see some of the other people that have been pushing promising candidates drop off and just start to turn their attention to either doing this one or the AstraZeneca product, which is a lot easier to manufacture. It doesn't require that mRNA technology. So it's much more readily available to countries that have existing vaccine production lines. more readily available to countries that have existing vaccine production lines.

Right. And talking about that AstraZeneca vaccine, any sense of when that might be approved here in Canada, that vaccine is as well as the Johnson and Johnson, we have one shot vaccine that has, you know, 66% efficacy, I think, which is still thought of, you know, very positively. Do we think that these could move the needles here soon? Yeah, so Health Canada has been doing a rolling review of the of those promising vaccine candidates. And the rolling review is kind of like a simplified process, it cuts out some of the bureaucracy, some of the red tape, so they can look at data as it's made available from the company, they don't have to wait for a final submission so last week health canada told me that they're expecting a decision on astrazeneca in the coming days so that was last friday so we could perhaps see something as soon as this week on in terms of

a regulatory review of that one and yeah johnson and johnson's product is it's actually potentially a huge thing for the whole vaccination campaign because it is just that single dose. They released the clinical trials last week. It's not as good as Pfizer and Moderna, which are over 90%. This is around the 66, 72% mark, depending on which country they did the results in because they were dragged down significantly in South Africa because the variant there just, the variant is vaccine resistant, essentially. But the J&J product, it actually showed complete protection against COVID-related hospitalization and death. So that's very encouraging.

That's very promising. Dr. Fauci reacting. The important point is that the protection against severe disease was very high, even in South Africa, where the mutant is dominant. That would be a hugely important tool in the fight, right? If you can get, and Canada's ordered 10 million of those shots. So if we can get 10 million people vaccinated with a single shot, and that would really reduce the amount of hospitalization and death that we're seeing right now. I mean, just a single shot will be so much easier for healthcare professionals in the system writ large, because they won't have to track the

second doses, right? They can just pump people out. And that's, that's it said and done, right? So that is something that we're certainly looking to that is the most important thing that we can do at this point is authorize more vaccines to be used here at home for we're not entirely dependent on Pfizer and Moderna. Right. And you know, as you mentioned, this is becoming more urgent, because of the variants, and because this has gone on for so long, and Canada has now passed over the weekend, the very grim milestone of 20,000 deaths. Yeah, I mean, there's no time to wait, the time to act is now. So I think that's why there is a sense of urgency among the government and the bureaucrats that work for them that new products have to be authorized. And if we can move up some of those back loaded contracts, if we can move up shots from Q3, Q4, Q2, whatever to now, we certainly would be making a huge contribution to the fight against COVID-19.

There's a hope out there among the public health community, among people who follow this closely, that we can get as many people vaccinated before we start to see those new variants take hold. Because those new variants are more contagious, you're more likely to get it. And while the science isn't settled on this yet, it does seem like they have the potential to be more deadly as well. So if we can get as many people pumped through as possible in short order, we will see the number of deaths and hospitalizations start to fall. And that's really the end goal here, isn't it? All right. So JP, you'll have to come back on then real soon and let us know how that's actually playing out. Thank you so much for this conversation. Really

appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. And hopefully when I come back, we are higher than 27th worldwide in terms of vaccines. We'll see. I very much hope that that is true as well. Thanks, Jamie. All right, so some news before we go today. For the second week in a row, tens of thousands of Russians took part in protests

to demand the release of prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. In Moscow, police blocked off the city's downtown and shut down public transit. A group monitoring the situation says more than 5,000 people have been detained. Last week, we talked to my colleague, CBC Russia correspondent Chris Brown about Navalny, who was arrested shortly after he returned to Russia after recovering from an attempt on his life. You can find that episode in our feed. That's it for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and see you tomorrow.