Feds outline plan to administer first COVID-19 vaccines, launching ‘dry run’ next week

OTTAWA — The federal government has outlined its initial plans to administer what are being considered Canada’s “Track 1” COVID-19 vaccines—Pfizer and Moderna—in the “coming weeks and months.”This will include a “soft launch” rehearsal of the Pfizer rollout happening next Monday.
“We’ll have a dry run in every province, and they will execute, and they’ll ensure that — without the vaccine of course — they execute the process of handling and ensuring that people are comfortable with the very unique requirements of handling an ultra-low temperature vaccine,” said Maj. Gen. Dany Fortin, who is running Canada’s logistical side of the vaccine effort, on Thursday at a press briefing in Ottawa. Fortin said this is part of planning that’s been ongoing since the spring, to be ready for movement of vaccines from the manufacturers to Canadians.
“We’re hard at it in the next couple of weeks to ensure that we are ready, and I kind of like the idea of being ready before the Christmas timeframe, so that we’re certain to be ready when it comes in January,” he said.
Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo said that Canada is expecting that these two vaccine candidates—two of the four currently being evaluated by Health Canada for safety—are expected to be “the earliest through the regulatory gates.”
As such, the government has been able to sketch out new details around how the rollout of these vaccines will work, and to organize the orders from each province and territory.On Thursday Fortin explained how the delivery of these two vaccines will happen, “commencing in January.”
For Pfizer, because this vaccine needs to be stored at an ultra-low temperature, it is going to be delivered directly by the pharmaceutical giant, first to at least 14 provincial “points of delivery” and then on to the places where it will be administered, as identified by the provinces. From there, dry ice and other freezer requirements will be in place to store the vaccines as health-care workers work to put needles into people’s arms. Pfizer is the only manufacturer that delivers this way.Source: ctvnews.ca