Fun fact, Canada was the home of Connaught labs, a publicly owned laboratory which was the first lab to produce the Salk's Polio vaccine, and went on to produce the Smallpox vaccine.
In the 1970s, however, Canada went on a privatizing spree (incidentally, the same gov't that ratified NAFTA), and Connaught was privatised and sold many time since.
More info here https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/03/11/the-...
Vancouver-based Acuitas Therapeutics developed the lipid nanoparticle delivery mechanism for the Pfizer vaccine, for example. There are others as well. This article lists three Vancouver companies:
https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-suppl...
And that's not even mentioning Vancouver biotech unicorn AbCellera, which has developed an antibody treatment.
A big part of that was little interest in supporting the industry from the government.
Apparently a vaccine manufacturer approached the government a while back and got a tepid response so decided to invest elsewhere.
In a different timeline if the AZ vaccine hadn’t been associated with rare blood clotting, if Pfizer/Moderna hasn’t been able to scale manufacturing as well that strategy would be looking very good.
It’s interesting to think that Canada and other nations that instead depended on international supply chains ultimately did much better though.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-04-26/university-que...
Blood clot risk is much higher the younger you are[1]. It would have been far better to continue using AstraZeneca, but limit it to a certain age and older.
[1] For example, 1.1 of the specific clots per 100 000 vaccinations of people in their 20s, falling to 0.2 per 100 000 in their 60s. https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/communicating-pote...
Until recently it was the only vaccine available for over 60s even.
Also FWIW. The risk of blood clots seems to be significantly higher in women than men. I think they should have focused on giving AZ to men and Pfizer to younger women.
For a while though some states were giving Pfizer to men in their 40s and 50s working from home, while recommending young women go and get dosed with AZ.
Canada had no local production. There was literally nothing they could do but wait. Its of course a problem not to have local production. But it’s not a lack of orders that was the issue, everything was ordered early in 2020, there was just no doses available.
”Israel cast a wide net last year when trying to secure vaccine doses at the height of the pandemic and pre-ordered from a number of companies.”
By April of 2021 it was already giving excess doses away.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/with-enough-suppli...
If you were a rich nation, it was eminently possibly to get early delivery dates written into your contracts. Canada decided not to for some reason (cost?) and in actual fact deeply regretted it.
Israel was one of the first to vaccinate most of their population - and they are a tiny country with no domestic manufacturing of the vaccines.
Although Israel quite openly stated they paid a premium to get early access to vaccines. So basically, it was simply a question of commercials, and ponying up the cahs.
Singapore did likewise - basically bought out every vaccine they could on the open market, and rushed to vaccinate their population.
I live in Australia, and it does appear our nation's leaders dragged their feet on the vaccine.
Our Prime Minister even publicly stated "It's not a race", regarding vaccinating the population.
A letter leaked recently, which showed Pfizer's managing director requesting an urgent meeting with our health minister, so we could get millions of doses. Pfizer was then told that the health minister wasn't available to talk with them, it got fobbed to some underlying in his department, then the deal got adragged out for six months after that - in the meantime, the UK and US signed up:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/12/in-hi...
Israel was an extreme outlier. It is not a counterpoint whatsoever. Israel got priority first shipping before Canada, and even the European countries that hosted the factories.
Many of these comments are weird in that they seem to hold Canada's vaccination effort as some sort of failure. In reality it was one of the most rapid on the planet, dramatically faster than just about every other OECD country outside of the US (courtesy of nationalizing production) and the UK (courtesy of protectionism), and then testbed Israel.
I'm not sure what you don't buy -- the fact that Canada signed up early and for massive quantities is very well accepted fact. The reality that Pfizer and Moderna's European factories became massively oversubscribed (while US factories were basically off limits to everyone else) is also accepted fact.
[1] - Even if Canada was suitable as a testbed (e.g. it's too large and distributed), healthcare is run at the provincial level. There are 13 sovereign healthcare agencies, and this is constitutionally decreed, so it was unlikely to have been possible even if the country agreed to do it.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-has-reserved-more-vaccine...
Canada was one of the first countries to pre-order vaccines, signing massive agreements with just about every candidate maker. I'm aware of literally a single deal happening with another country prior to Canada's orders.
What thwarted Canada's efforts was that the US defacto nationalized the medical establishment in that country, while Canada had basically become beholden to larger centers courtesy of an over reliance on free trade. With the US production nationalized, Canada, and truly the rest of the world, had to rely upon manufacturing in Europe. The EU at times lurched towards protectionism but never did, and Canada is in its debt.
Though in the wake of it Canada has committed to no less than four vaccine manufacturing plants, including mRNA vaccines. Lesson learned.
`"Bold” strategy? Canada had no option if they wanted to vaccinate quickly.'
Yes, it was a strategy. The manufacturers were dictating a timeline for shots that would have meant that the number of people fully vaccinated would be quicker, but the number of people partly vaccinated would be much slower. People much smarter than you or I did an analysis and decided on another approach, including mixing shots. And yes, of course it was because of a supply constraint (for reasons mentioned elsewhere, but having positively nothing to do with Canada "dragging it's heels"), otherwise such approaches wouldn't be necessary, no?