A health-care worker prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Toronto on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Canada to get 20% of promised Pfizer vaccines in next few weeks; feds look at vial size

Canada has been saying for several weeks that the shipments would return to normal in mid-February

  • Jan. 28, 2021 12:00 a.m.

The man overseeing the country’s national vaccine rollout says Canada is getting 149,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine over the next two weeks.

That’s only one-fifth of what had been promised before the company slowed production in a bid to ramp up operations in Belgium.

Canada has been saying for several weeks that the shipments would return to normal in mid-February, but Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin now says Pfizer is sending 335,000 doses the week of Feb. 15, which is still only 91 per cent of the previous delivery schedule.

Fortin says the deliveries still are based on five doses per vial.

Earlier in the day Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said the feds had lowered their estimates for total Pfizer vaccines in-hand by end of March from four million to 3.5 million.

But Fortin says Canada is still on-pace to get four million doses by that time, saying the government had given the provinces more conservative figures for planning purposes.

The Canadian Press

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