The province is not going to get at least 13,500 doses of Pfizer’s BioNTech vaccine on time.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Doctor Robert Strang says Pfizer is changing its production line to make more vaccine in the long run, but that requires them to shut down some production lines in the short-term.
Doctor Strang says anticipating something like this is why health officials have held back enough vaccine for everyone who has gotten their first shot to get a second.
“We can’t stop doing that holdback until we get long term security of vaccine supply,” he says. “The last thing we want to do is have people with one dose sitting, waiting for their second dose of vaccine.”
Doctor Robert Strang withholding doses makes sure none is wasted.
He says Pfizer officials have committed to ship the missed doses when operations ramp back up.
Doctor Strang says, if they receive the missed doses by March, they will be able to get the vaccination schedule back on track, but longer than that might affect the planned vaccine rollout completion target.
“This is another signal that we still don’t have long-term guarantees around vaccine supply.”
He says that could push completion of the vaccination program, getting a vaccine to every resident of the province who wants one, past September.
Doctor Strang reported four new cases Tuesday. Three are travel related in Central Zone, one those in a student that virtually attends two universities in the province. One is in a close contact of a previously reported case in Northern Zone.
22 active infections remain.
