U.S. President Joe Biden has just suggested he may send more shots to Canada.
"We have talked to our neighbours. As a matter of fact, a fellow who is working really hard to take care of his country and deal with this, I was on the phone with him for half an hour today," he says.
"The prime minister of Canada — we helped a little bit there. We're going to try to help some more, but there's other countries as well that I'm confident we can help, including in Central America," Biden says.
(Biden is almost certainly talking about more U.S.-made AstraZeneca shots. Biden sent (or "loaned") us 1.5 million doses earlier this month. That product isn't yet authorized for use in the American marketplace.)
"We're looking at what is going to be done with some of the vaccines we are not using," Biden said.
"We've got to make sure they are safe to be sent and we hope to be of some help and value to countries around the world."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Based on current delivery estimates — and those could change! — there should be enough Pfizer and Moderna shots coming in May to vaccinate every Ontarian over the age of 30 with at least one shot by the first week of June.
As of today, 5,248,345 shots have been distributed to Ontario minus 351,354 second shots = 4,896,991 people who have already received, or soon will receive, at least one shot.
4,485,780 Pfizer shots will arrive in Ontario between April 26 and June 6. At least 235,700 Moderna shots will come over the next month (there will likely be more).
Maj.-Gen. Fortin confirms *no new doses* of the Serum Institute-produced AstraZeneca shots will arrive this month. One million doses had been expected by month's end — that's not happening now.
300,000 Johnson & Johnson doses will arrive next week, they will be distributed to the provinces and territories during the first week of May.
As India grapples with a deadly surge in cases, the government there has restricted virtually all exports of Serum Institute-made shots, diverting most of the 2.4 million doses it churns out each day to the domestic vaccination campaign.
Some incredibly encouraging vaccine news from @CDCDirector today: "So far, out of more than 84 million people who are fully vaccinated, we have only received reports of less than 6,000 breakthrough cases." While likely an underestimation, the number (very, very) low.
@CDCDirector "Of the nearly 6,000 cases, approximately 30 percent had no symptoms at all. It demonstrates that... they also help you prevent getting seriously ill," @CDCDirector said.
"Based on these data, here’s the bottom line: Getting a vaccine will help protect you, it will help protect others, and it will help us end this pandemic," she said. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Some important vaccine updates — Maj. Gen. Dany Fortin says the 590,000 Moderna doses that were delayed last week (slow quality assurance process) are leaving Europe today, and will land in Canada tomorrow morning. Provinces will have them by Saturday, the general says.
The AstraZeneca shots from the U.S. (the 1.5 million that arrived Tues.) have now received the necessary Health Canada authorizations. Deliveries to the provinces have started and will finish Sat. (This is likely why Ont. has announced an expansion of AZ in pharmacies that day.)
By the end of this week, the feds will have distributed about 9.5 million COVID-19 shots in total, Fortin says. "We have come a long way since our first deliveries to provinces and territories on December 14."
New — Ontario is expanding vaccine eligibility starting Saturday — people 55+ can start booking appointments for the AstraZeneca shot at participating pharmacies. 350 more pharmacies will be administering that shot as of April 3 (for a total of 700 locations across the province.)
The province expects the number of pharmacies administering the shot will grow to 1,500 by month's end. (There are 4,500 community pharmacies in the province, according to the Canadian Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities.)
Pharmacists told me in January they could do as many as 3 million shots a week at their 11,500 locations nationwide, if they had supply: cbc.ca/news/politics/…
A major development on the vaccine front — PMJT and @AnitaOakville have just announced that Pfizer is moving up 5 million doses from Q3 to Q2. That means 17.8 million Pfizer shots alone will be delivered between April-June.
@AnitaOakville Combined with the 12.3 million more Moderna doses expected in this Q2 period — we will have 30.1 million mRNA vaccines delivered over the next three months. (7 million mRNA will be delivered by the end of this week, for a total of 37.1 million in Jan.-June period.)
We are also expecting at least 3.4 million more of the (currently) age-restricted AstraZeneca in the April-June period from COVAX and Serum Institute (that's in addition to the 2 million AZ that will have been delivered by day's end.) So, a total of 43 million shots by Canada Day