Canada donated over 4M Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to COVAX. Today, 784K landed in Egypt – National

Hundreds of thousands of Moderna’s COVID-19 doses donated by Canada to a global vaccine-sharing program have landed in Egypt, government sources say.

Government sources with knowledge of the vaccine schedule say shipments containing millions more COVID-19 vaccines are expected to land in the coming days.

The 784,280 doses, donated through the COVAX Facility, brings Canada’s total contributions to 4,225,760.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Saturday at the G20 summit in Rome that Canada is donating 10 million Moderna doses to poorer nations through the COVAX vaccine sharing facility, and will be ramping up its total vaccine contributions to 200 million by the end of 2022.

“The size of Canada’s commitment of 200 million doses by the end of 2022 is very significant given our size and given the fact that we do not have our own domestic bio-manufacturing capacity,” she said.

“It’s hard to be exactly precise and may be particularly hard for Canada since we’re not manufacturing this stuff ourselves. But let me just say, we expect those Moderna doses to be delivered quickly.”

Vaccination and vaccine recognition were key topics during the G20 summit, which finished up on Sunday.

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Canada to donate 100M COVID-19 vaccines to world, Trudeau says

Canada has fully vaccinated just under 74 per cent of its entire population. On average, the G20 nations have fully vaccinated about 55 per cent of their populations. Globally, 38 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated. In Africa, it’s not even six per cent.

The World Health Organization has urged countries to donate to its COVAX facility initiative, staking the world’s economic recovery on the equitable distribution of vaccines.

“The longer vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will keep circulating and changing, the longer the social and economic disruption will continue, and the higher the chances that more variants will emerge that render vaccines less effective,” WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference last month.

The agency is also pleading with countries to recognize the COVID-19 vaccines it has authorized for emergency use, including China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm shots, as borders reopen to immunized travellers.

The COVAX program has shied from its target of delivering 2 billion doses by the end of the year, distributing just 90 million vaccines to poorer countries in need.

More to come. 

— With files from Global News’ Mike Le Couteur, the Canadian Press and the Associated Press