Canadian Politics Today

Procurement Minister Anita Anand announced on Friday that “based on the best scientific data available to date, and on the recommendation of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the vaccine task force,” the government has exercised an option within their existing contract, to lock-in the delivery of more doses of the pharmaceutical giant’s vaccine candidate.

Under the deal, Canada was planning to receive up to 56 million doses of its vaccine candidate, but had specifically locked in 20 million of those. That’s now doubled.

As well, Anand said the federal government has signed contracts with FedEx Express Canada and Innomar Strategies for the “end-to-end, COVID-19 vaccine logistics solution,” which is essentially the shipment and delivery contract to distribute vaccines, with the exception of the Pfizer vaccine as that one requires such cold temperatures that the manufacturer is handling the transport itself.