Alberta will be receiving thousands fewer COVID-19 vaccine doses than anticipated in the first quarter of this year and the province's health minister says the federal government is to blame.
On Monday, Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro said the federal government is failing Canadians on getting vaccines out to residents and Alberta will be receiving 63,000 fewer doses of vaccine in the first quarter of the year.
“This is a grim situation that seems to be getting worse every week," Shandro said.
Vaccine delays have been widespread after the Pfizer manufacturing facility shut down temporarily so the company could scale up its operations. Alberta was originally told it would see a reduction of between 20 and 80 per cent of its expected doses over a four-week period, but later found out no doses would be delivered to the province during the last week of January. Now, the province says there will be a 78-per-cent vaccine shortfall in the first week of February.
The federal government said these reductions would be made up later in the first quarter, but Shandro said the province will be down thousands of vaccines.
“This means 63,000 more Albertans will not receive this life-saving vaccine,” Shandro said, adding those who are delayed in getting the vaccine will be seniors over the age of 75 and First Nations seniors over the age of 65.
Pfizer is now saying each vial of vaccine should result in six people being immunized, but health officials say that isn't possible.
Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Alberta's skilled vaccine team is pulling as many doses out of the vials as safely possible, resulting in a sixth dose in about half of the vials. To get a sixth dose out of each vial more often, the province would need to use a new syringe that is limited in stock, due to a global demand in these syringes, but even with the syringe, achieving a sixth dose is only possible around 75 per cent of the time.
So far, the province has given out 102,524 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 12,672 Albertans fully immunized with both doses.
Canada has so far given out 913,137 doses of vaccine but is falling behind other nations in the G7, with 13,927 doses given out per 100,000 people. Canada is being outpaced by the United Kingdom (95,175 per 100,000), the United States (64,261 per 100,000), Italy (23,892 per 100,000) and Germany (22,711 per 100,000). Canada has given out only slightly more doses than France, where there have been 13,857 doses per 100,000 given out.
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