She noted that Canada just has approval for one vaccine right now the messenger RNA vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and that the first doses are just starting to arrive.
The first Canadians were vaccinated earlier this week.
The first day of the Pfizer-BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine being administered at The Ottawa Hospital.Photo by The Ottawa Hospital /HANDOUT
On Friday, Canada was part of an announcement that COVAX, a global collaboration to get COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries, now has agreements in place to access nearly two billion doses of several vaccine candidates, which should be enough to protect the most vulnerable in eligible countries during the first half of 2021.
Canada had earlier pledged $485 million to support COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines in low and middle income countries. Seventy-five million of that supports the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in lower income countries through the global vaccine alliance GAVI, which co-leads the COVAX initiative. That money includes a $5-million investment in the development of a system to equitably reallocate vaccine doses through COVAX, either by donation or exchange.
COVAX published guidelines Friday for how those donations from wealthier countries should work.
Key to those recommendations is that the donated vaccines should be available early.
Shared doses should be made available as soon as possible and ideally concurrently by the sharing country as it receives vaccines to increase equitable access and have maximum impact. Dose sharing should begin very early in 2021.
Canada has signed agreements with seven manufacturers to purchase more vaccine doses per capita than any country in the world.
