‘Alarming’ new national COVID-19 projections due Friday as questions swirl about vaccine delivery

Thestar.com
Nov. 20, 2020
Tonda MacCharles and Robert Benzie

Federal public health officials are expected to release “alarming” new COVID-19 projections Friday -- modelling numbers that were presented to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Opposition party leaders in a rare joint briefing Thursday.

“Given the numbers” it was important for the other party leaders to hear the projections first-hand, to “seize the situation” and to have a chance to ask questions directly of federal public health advisers, Drs. Theresa Tam and Howard Njoo, said a senior government official speaking on background.

“All parties should be aware of the latest developments and what’s coming clearly in the next few weeks,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting, which combined in-person and virtual participants.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Leader Annamie Paul attended the briefing, while Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet dispatched his House leader Alain Therrien.

One source later said that the modelling showed Canada could hit 60,000 new daily cases in December if Canadians increase their contacts, 20,000 cases if people maintain current rates of social interaction, and 10,000 only if they move quickly to reduce contacts. The source said that grimmest projection did not include key variables, including an effective reproductive number.

Tam last week had warned that the country could hit 10,000 new daily cases in December.

In a statement released after the meeting, O’Toole said later that what struck him was that 11 months in, “after thousands of lives and millions of jobs have been lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars has been added to the national debt, we as a country are worse off than we were at the start of the pandemic.”

He placed the blame for that squarely on Trudeau’s government for failing to deliver rapid tests, to give Canadians clear information to make decisions and to provide a clear vaccine plan.

The government official said they discussed modelling numbers, vaccines, long-term-care homes, schools, rapid tests, international factors in Canada’s pandemic, and interprovincial travel. The official denied the goal was to get other party leaders on board with the government’s public health message.

It comes in a week when the Opposition has pushed Trudeau hard on the Liberals’ COVID-19 response, especially on Ottawa’s vaccine distribution plans.

But much of that road map is still being worked out.

At Queen’s Park, Health Minister Christine Elliott reiterated that Ontario is expecting to receive 40 per cent of Canada’s initial allotment of four million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and two million doses of the Moderna vaccine -- numbers she said were given by the federal government but which Trudeau declined to confirm Thursday “until we have much more certainty around them.”

“We do expect on that to be receiving 1.6 million doses of the Pfizer product and 800,000 of the Moderna product,” Elliott told reporters Thursday.

The minister said the province “has a detailed group that’s working within the Ministry of Health to deal with the physical logistics,” such as safely storing the serum at low temperatures.

“Then there are also the issues about who should receive the first vaccines,” she said, noting the committee’s work is well under way.

Elliott said “there are people from the ethics tables that are also going to be on this committee to figure out what is the most fair and equitable way of distributing the vaccine.”

Trudeau said only that there are “many ongoing preliminary discussions around our plan to unfold, to rollout vaccines and deliver them across the country.”

Ottawa’s role is to co-ordinate the global purchase and front-end delivery of vaccines to provinces.

So far, the federal government has shortlisted four companies that specialize in providing logistics services.

The federal government will soon decide whether to further invite them to compete for the job of co-ordinating the delivery of vaccines, or whether it will simply select one or more to do the work.

That decision was expected to be made by Nov. 23, but seems certain to be delayed to late November, said another official who spoke on a background-only basis.

Additionally, the federal government has bought 126 freezers -- made by Panasonic and Thermal Scientific -- to boost existing federal freezer capacity to store anticipated COVID-19 vaccine supplies, once approved by Health Canada.

Of the 126, 26 are “ultracold” and can store vaccines at minus 80C, and 100 are freezers that provide minus 20C. Ottawa says that means it has secured freezer capacity for about approximately 33.5 million “ultra-frozen” and frozen vaccines.

Federal officials who answered questions from the Star downplayed the need for additional help from the private sector or other Canadian companies which in the past week stepped up to offer to mobilize to assist with the daunting logistics of providing cold-chain storage for the vaccine.

The federal government plans now to work only through the four companies on the shortlist.

Those companies may subcontract portions of the work, but all have guaranteed they’ll be able to provide end-to-end support for vaccine delivery.

Pfizer’s is the only vaccine candidate, among the seven for which Canada has purchase contracts, that requires “ultracold” storage temperatures.

Moderna, the second company to report its RNA-based vaccine candidate shows a 94.5 per cent efficacy rate, has less stringent cold storage requirements.

Canada has purchased 20 million doses of each.

It’s not clear which vaccine or vaccines will first cross the finish line at the Health Canada regulatory agency before they will be allowed to be distributed.

Tam has said some vaccines could become available in early January, within six or seven weeks.