Welcome to Canada’s official subreddit! This is the place to engage on all things Canada. Nous parlons en anglais et en français. Please be respectful of each other when posting, and note that users new to the subreddit might experience posting limitations until they become more active and longer members of the community. Do not hesitate to message the mods if you experience any issues!
Canada signs deal to produce Novavax COVID-19 vaccine at Montreal plant
COVID-19
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
This submission appears to related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on Canada. Please see this post for resources on this event: https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/k423qh/covid19_health_support_megathread_8_reminder/
COVID fatigue is real, but please remember this is a real, serious disease. The following rules apply:
Do not post false/misleading information, conspiracy theories, or unproven medical claims. Find medical / scientific information in medical subreddits.
You are not required to agree with all measures put in place, but engaging in / promoting / encouraging the violation of relevant public health laws or guidelines will result in a permanent ban.
Public health authorities are not the enemy. They are not immune from criticism on this subreddit, but do not claim they are part of some plot to promote some variety of authoritarianism.
Cette présentation semble liée à la pandémie de COVID-19 en cours et à ses répercussions sur le Canada. S'il vous plaît voir ce poste pour les ressources sur cet événement: https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/k423qh/covid19_health_support_megathread_8_reminder/
Veuillez ne pas publier d'informations fausses / trompeuses, théories du complot, politisation des ordonnances / directives sanitaires, et surtout ne pas faire de soumissions encourageant les autres à défier les ordres de santé publique à ce subreddit.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
The article is worth reading and I got a few interesting tidbits out of it such as:
- The facility at NRC is under construction and expected to be ready sometime this summer. It would produce about 2 million doses of Novavax (double-dose shot) per month.
- The NRC has tried unsuccessfully up to now to convince Big Pharma to allow for Canadian production of a coronavirus vaccine or even work on joint projects that research ways to improve manufacturing processes so that vaccine production would be even greater.
- Sanofi has a plant in Toronto which produces our vaccines of whooping cough, polio and tetanus while GSK has a plant in Quebec which produces most of our annual allotment of flu vaccines.
-
That's genuinely pretty impressive.
Not going to see vaccines out of it until end of 2021, since HC needs to approve the facility.
https://twitter.com/AbigailBimman/status/1356664053888909313?s=20
Definitely not ideal, but given that there may need to be COVID vaccine boosters and adjustments (due to variants), it's still a good step. Not to mention potential vaccine development in the figure for whatever else pops up.
Comment deleted by user
Underappreciated fact. Longer the virus exists out there, more variants, greater likelihood of becoming resistant to existing vaccines and fucking us all over again.
Yes, but it's likely that we will need boosters and different versions of this vaccine as new variants are found. It's great that we will be able to produce our own coronavirus vaccines domestically longterm.
But not great that this does nothing for us this year...
This doesn’t bode well considering the feds are still touting the September date where everyone will be vaccinated. I guess we’ll stop receiving vaccines shortly.
I think Pfizer will do the bulk of carrying the load when it comes to vaccinating Canadians.
Lets see. Feds said Sept with only Moderna and Pfizer. So if J&J, AZN, Novavax are all approved, it should move up the date by at least a month.
Work started a while ago https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/construction-problems-prevented-national-research-council-from-opening-vaccine-facility-on-schedule
The fact that we even have a vaccine this quickly is a scientific miracle. There have been lots of shitty things in the world over the last little while, but what humans can accomplish when we really put our mind to it (and are highly motivated) is truly damn impressive.
‘Sometime’ a keep your fingers crossed as the facility has been under construction for awhile and has faced some delays.
When was the last time a government building program didn't run behind schedule and over budget?
The real delay is the approval of the vaccine itself.
Comment removed by moderator
This is simply untrue. No safety steps were skipped, and the trials were not rushed. The vaccines are getting approval more quickly because they don't have to wait in line to go throught the process.
No safety related steps were skipped.
there’s absolutely 0 chance this will be ready by then, even1-2 years is optimistic
I’m surprised big pharma relented, they usually are quite annoyed with Canada because we won’t let them price gouge our citizens like our neighbours to the south. I’m sure there are leaps and bounds of improvements to insulin but I don’t think that necessitates a several orders of magnitude price increase for example.
Big Pharma must have felt that whatever deal the NRC was offering before just wasn't worth accepting. It'd follow that the NRC sweetened the deal enough so that at least Novavax accepted something now that'd allow for Canadian production. I can only guess what the sweetener(s) might have been (if it were to indeed exist).
The NRC is likely on a very tight leash to produce Novavax's vaccine. Taking your example with the difference in pricing between how it's done here and in the USA, maybe the contract between Novavax and the NRC forbids the export of any doses made here. Taking the thought process a little further along, the NRC might have initially left the deal open so that any production exceeding Canadian requirements could be sold to other countries. Yet to keep Novavax happy or convince it to allow for any production here, the NRC needed to take out that provision/request.
It’s the latter, I’m certain. There’s gonna be a hot market in vaccines going forward. Especially since Covid is likely here to stay and boosters will be a thing. They will use this as a joint facility where Novovax can produce for sale to whoever. Which, honestly, is best because the financial incentive to keep the facility operating and current points towards a bright future.
Comment deleted by user
Hopefully the NRC can keep it. Just in case.
God I hope we keep it as a state run asset.
But we all know what's gonna happen the second a "fiscally responsible" party comes in a decides to "cut govt waste"
In reality the decision should be made based on how this organization runs as state-owned. If they start screwing up Small-Pox vaccinations like the last one did, then its probably time to go.
But ya, I hope we can make this work. Make it worth the cost in the long term.
Offload it as soon as we're done with it while it still has value. If we wait till it's run into the ground we'll get a fraction of what the facility is worth.
Dude, thats not at all the point
The point of crown corporations is to fill a gap that isn't being provided adequately by private industry. If the government bears the risk of construction and development and recuperates the cost by selling to private industry which will maintain the services the facility operates then the crown corp has served its purpose.
You mean like the isotopes crisis?
http://blog.utpjournals.com/2020/06/29/the-political-and-economic-roots-of-canadas-isotopes-crisis/
Mulroney crippled it and Harper sold it for parts.
I'm fine with it being privatized as long as the government negotiates fair repayment for their investment. (Government gets shares that they can sell, or treats the public funding as a loan to be repaid over 20 years or something in that vein). Government run R&D sometimes works but more often than not it stagnates without a profit motive to drive actual improvements since agencies are more concerned about maintaining their political capital than they are with improving their products.
Though no matter what happens - The government needs to make sure that if we do privatize our vaccine production it can't just be bought up by foreign companies and have Canadian production shut down again. We need to have at least 1 company producing each of the critical supplies for a pandemic on Canadian soil (N95 masks, ventilators, vaccines, etc) This won't be the last pandemic we've got to deal with.
And it's going to be harder to do this but after looking at how badly we got burned for having no local supply chains to deal with a pandemic, we need to have a long hard look at other ways we could get burned by our trading partners in other emergencies. I'm a neoliberal, I like the idea of free trade and easy immigration, but it's easier to negotiate and maintain good international deals when we have the freedom to step away from the table because our domestic production can satisfy all of our most critical needs. And as long as we're completely dependent on the EU, the US, or China for any product we're going to be negotiating from a position of weakness.
Bahahahahhahahaha, are you new here? This has prettymuch never been the case of any privatization any Canadian government has done.
This lab is an expansion of a NRC facility, so the only way is if the whole facility got sold, which hopefully is a safeguard but not a very strong one
And I fully agree we need to support a certain level of Autarky regardless of cost. Which is a hard sell to the "fiscally responsible" free market types.
That's easy. Just place high tariffs on foreign vaccines, ventilators, and PPE, but Globalists here will scream their lungs out about "free trade benefits Canada."
Used to have one and Harper shut it down. Rumours are it was horribly managed - all the worst expectations of a government-run facility unfortunately.
Lease it out to pharma companies
I absolutely hope so. Certain critical industries need to have a state run presence. PPE, vaccines, whatever. Doesn't have to be a monopoly, but if it's critical to our national security there needs to be a crown corporation in the space.
i wouldn't be so sure about PPE production, there are much smarter ways of ensuring a safe supply of critical supplies.
what we do need is a national industrial strategy, something most countries maintain (France/Germany/Japan) in the sake of development and protecting supply chains and productions. Unlike these countries (hypocritical mercantilists really), we actually fully embraced the free trade/market economy. Now it has backfired us, its time to reconsider our strategy.
There's plenty of research and development in this country, but we tend to usually forgo the latter part of production and commercialization.
I think we've all come to the conclusion that its important that this kind of infrastructure, manufacturing PPE, producing vaccines, not just be outsourced to the cheapest country. When shit hits the fan border walls and price gouging start looking like good options.
But why am I not surprised this facility chosen by the feds is in Montreal? Everything this government does seems to have a Quebec-first priority to it.
Pre-Covid Quebec was one of the provinces that pushed the most for more infrastructure related to vaccine production. It's not from a "Quebec-First" mentality. Quebec already has a lot of people and infrastructure for it.
As long as Liberals stay in power it's going to be state run.
They're keeping it as a research & development & production facility. Just like how many private companies pay NRC for using scientific instruments, they'll be able to allow biotech companies for some initial production runs.
It wouldn't be sold. Its a direct government agency, not a crown corporation.
24 million does a year is pretty good.
Sounds like this vaccine is going to need to be modified semi regularly going forward. Not sure what that means for phased trials.
I find it remarkable that the brand new mRNA vaccines were not only the fastest developed, but also appear to be the most effective.
Great to hear! Now just gotta get this vaccine approved! Hopefully it won't take too much work to get this plant geared up to manufacture this.
At least two months to approve Novavax and the plant won’t be finished until at least the summer
Comment deleted by user
Comment deleted by user
Comment deleted by user
Comment deleted by user
It normally takes a long time to do so
Health Canada has their hands full working on other critical tasks
The facility won’t be ready until July so there’s no rush
New drug submissions usually take a year from the beginning to the end, if not longer. Under interim order Health Canada can expedite, but no corners can be cut. People never seem to be too happy with Health Canada’s speed; whether too quickly or too slow- it’s a losing battle for regulators, particularly evident during this pandemic. Even my old grandma now tries to be a scientist and has something to say about efficacy and safety of each vaccine. She doesn’t even know that Advil and ibuprofen are the same thing and how to pronounce acetaminophen. facepalm
What could possibly be more critical than approving more vaccines
Other vaccines, for example? New drugs for treating COVID? New kinds of tests? Managing the pandemic?
It’s not like 2 months is slow by any means - it definitely shows that it is a priority.
For number 3 if we approved the vac sooner then we could be shipped some from the company so its not that there's no rush.
It’s funny how when Health Canada approves things extremely quick, people worry that the drugs were approved too quickly; when Health Canada approves things not in the matter of days, people wonder what’s taking more than a few days. I even heard people asking why Health Canada didn’t approve drugs that didn’t submit their applications to be sold in the Canadian market. Regulatory approval processes for pharmaceuticals seem like a black hole in many people’s overall worldly knowledge.
have you considered the possibility that the people making each of those arguments are different people and that the views of one are not the views of all?
Ah. So still a failure for the federal government. US and UK will be back to more normal lives by the summer, while we are still languishing in our current bullshit.
Wow, it’s clearly impossible to impress some people.
Comment deleted by user
Canada is slatted to get doses from the Novavax plant in the UK in Q2
For those who didnt click:
Novavax's vaccine is about 2 months away from approval
the facility is still being built
it will only produce 2mil vaccines per month
trudeau signed a deal for 52 million of these vaccines
52 million purchased is not necessarily limited to ones produced here, in fact likely isn't.
So basically they'll have all doses ordered by Fall 2023?
We also have Moderna & Pfizer vax coming in from offshore. My sense is that the federal government wants to have facilities & expertise in vaccine production in Canada. I endorse the investment in both aspects - facilities & expertise.
Yup. Soon enough we will have more than enough doses. I think this may end up being like flu shots which are needed every year so having this made in Canada is a massive win.
It reminds me a lot of the situation with masks and other ppe at the start of the pandemic. Good to see we are actually building infrastructure and not just paying extra for imports so when the next pandemic hits we'll be more ready
Currently Novavax is planned to ship from the USA. Using this new factory is a change.
It'll help with exporting to third world nations cause they'll still need billions in 2021. Also booster shots will almost be required for Covid as new variants mutate. Covid is never going away. It will keep spreading and mutating and we'll need to the manufacturing to quickly make booster shots to prevent future outbreaks.
Canada is one of only a few advanced countries where independent vaccine strategy is of utmost importance. Why?
USA and EU showed middle fingers on Moderna and Pfizer rollouts. EU doesn't give a shit due to Canada's close ties with UK (remember Brexit?). UK is hoarding up AZ vaccine for its own use. Australia and Newzealand do not seem to be in a hurry for vaccine strategy since infections are coming down and other precautions are working well. Japan and South Korea too. This leaves Canada as the only advanced "large" economy with no success on vaccine strategy.
China said it will help faster rollouts to Canada (and other countries) - no news yet. CCP doesn't have a good reputation from other countries too in terms of living up to the promise of vaccine delivery.
That leaves India - the largest vaccine producer in the world. It has excess doses and delivering AZ vaccines to 30+ countries already. But JT is not in good terms with Modi - at least it seems like. Else he would have requested India already.
Its high time Canada should produce its own vaccine. But I wonder why Novavax - its not approved in any corner of the world - not even for emergency use.
I'm all for moderna and pfizer, bring it on. But if the only option is china vaccine vs no vaccine, yeah I'll take my chances with the virus.
Lol no they didn’t. They developed and ordered the vaccines first. That’s it. You get what you pay for.
It’s first come, first served.
Notice how we just signed a deal with Novavax to manufacture doses here - an American company that wouldn’t have a vaccine without the US Government’s immense support. Novavax just completed their trial in the UK, that’s why we chose that one.
In the meantime, we are receiving doses. And they fully expect to stick to the original timeline.
India does not have excess doses - less than 1% of their population has even received it. They’re sending doses to countries as a way to counter China’s influence in the region because they don’t have to answer to their public like politicians here.
India having excess doses isn't calculated on per capita lines. Its stated by measuring production speed relative to the speed of roll out to its population (as you said <1% vaccinated so far). They have excess production since the Serum Institute of India started manufacturing AZ vaccines back in September 2020. It is reported that they have over 50 Million stocks piled up already. And given SII has a huge plant (makes 60% of world's vaccines!), they have no issues to produce more as more Indians get vaccinated eventually. That's why it could export to other counties. Only some portion of doses are being donated to neighboring countries (like in 50k, 100k etc), but millions are being sent on commercial lines to Brazil, Middle East, Africa etc. There is no question of countering China there. CCP is countering itself by its fake promises on vaccine roll outs.
I will never take a vaccine made in China, don't know anyone who would. I'm not sure why a year after this pandemic has started we just have news that we will make vaccines, in summer, maybe. Everyone is happy with this timeline? I hope the US border opens this summer because that's where many of us will be getting vaccinated.
You're not the center of the universe. Countries on every continent are taking the Chinese vaccines. Plenty of people here would be happy to have some freedom again and not risk dying from Covid such as the elderly.
Justin can dress up as Indian and dance our problems away... He is experienced one.
Nobody ever talks about the Russian vaccine but it’s also 90% effective, fairly cheap to produce, easy to store, and open to licensing.
I know “Russia bad” and whatnot but there’s a deadly pandemic.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00191-4/fulltext
Canada showed middle fingers to everyone when it decided to invest FUCK ALL in research and development for a coronavirus vaccine.
Maple flavor I hear!
Can't wait for the announcement about production delays in a week
I’ve been pretty vocal on my criticism for the federal government on the vaccine file, but this is unambiguous good news. It’s too bad they won’t likely be ready in time to really make a difference for 2021, but longer term as the virus evolves this will help give us the ability to create seasonal capacity to deal with that. Good job.
How many can we crank out a week?
When it's at full capability, about 500,000 per week.
Even though construction is expected to finish by summer, don't expect any production until much later in 2021 at the earliest because the Feds would still need to inspect and certify the completed facilities.
It'll also take at least a little time for the production lines to move up to full capacity. It's unrealistic to think that it'll be ready to go from 0 to 100 by producing 500,000 doses per week right after certification is granted, let alone after construction is finished.
500,000 a week starting in July.
That’s assuming that it is completed on time and the day they turn it on, they can operate at 100% capacity with no issues.
That's basically how everything works (the assumption) even in existing facilities unless there's an issue that's already identified that we know will cause delays
No different than gaant chart we do at work. It's based on a set of assumptions and schedule we have at the time that's updated if we receive new information. This is simply because we need to assign a timeline.
Eg site plan approval takes 12 mths typically and what we allocate in our schedule. But that can of course change if we dig up artifacts, or there's delay in materials or etc..then it gets delayed .
Starting next fall actually
What about providence therapeutics who has a promising mRNA based vaccine?
They have essentially been begging the feds for money, and testing, and have been pretty much shot down since at least June 2020.
Perhaps there are legitimate reasons, like it's not as promising as they claim? I dunno, often there is a lot of back-end discussion the public doesn't know the details of.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/local/calgary/2021/1/26/1_5282398.html
Starting trials now. Calgary based company.
What's more is that the trials are for Phase 1 so Providence is unlikely to be relevant for taming this pandemic.
Medicago is further along by starting Phase 3 this month but it had been working on a vaccine for an upcoming (flu) pandemic since the days of Obama. However, it was also dogged by similar federal indifference for several years until Trudeau finally coughed up serious cash (~ $170 million) in October 2020.
I'm hoping that the current shortages will show the Federal Government that waiting for the next pandemic to fund vaccine production will be too late and actually fund some of these projects.
I hope so too.
Even without a pandemic, it'd be easier to convince the electorate about spending x millions of dollars per year for pandemic preparedness be it in maintaining a large and fresh stockpile of PPE or scalable domestic capacity in vaccine production rather than some virtue signalling or a PM's quasi-vanity project like donating $50 million to a charity for global children's education.
At least public support for this kind of pandemic preparation despite the initial outlay would be as high as it could ever be. This kind of preparation ought to be on any serious political party's platform for at least the next 10 or even 20 years given how much the lower 90% of society has been affected in one blow. It might even go to the point where pandemic expenditures would crowd out some of the expenditures made in the name of saving the environment.
Hopefully they take it seriously.
Now that the money has been sunk into research and development there is really no excuse.
According to the CEO of providence, mRNA vaccines are much easier to mass produce than typical vaccines - it’s the clinical trials and making sure it’s safe that’s an issue. It’s touched on in the article that I linked above, I’ve quoted the important tidbits below:
"The amazing thing about messenger RNA because it's so quick to synthesize, you can make multiple versions, and you can adjust that as needed quickly, so we've already made three and we're running three different vaccines through animal models this week. And so then we'll take the best of those three, and we'll go into manufacturing with the idea of going into human clinical trials. This year, as early as September or October."
That’s kind of the point I was making. Back in June of 2020, they were asking for fed money to ramp up clinical trials and production.
See article below:
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/local/calgary/2020/6/10/1_4979205.html
Well, there's your problem. Should have moved their headquarters to Montreal if they'd wanted the Federal government to pay attention.
I believe they have been given money. They do want more though.
Providence is in the wrong province.
Providence Therapeutics is located in Calgary. No way Trudeau is given Alberta any money.
Trudeau bought a pipeline for Alberta and has allocated billions in infrastructure spending and more billions to develop agriculture in Alberta. Meanwhile the formula for equalization payments to Alberta was written by Kenney and he continues to gamble away your taxes. This is getting to “thanks Obama” levels of ridiculous
This. Albertans have such a victim complex. Like Ontario is somehow getting rich off of Albertans. We have our own major economic nightmare of losing industry and skyrocketing cost of living.
Don't they mostly complain about Quebec?
Not my AB relatives, with them it's pretty much "the rest of Canada hates us"
Should rename TMX the "Trudeau Mountain Express" and see if the Albertans refuse to use it out of spite
Well why can't Alberta give them a billion instead of buying a failed pipeline?
Because vaccines don't power lifted trucks
A risen truck lifts all bros
but if you pump vaccines in your lifted trucks and with 5G you can control it just like Bill Gates controls sheeple like me.
That is a whole different thread.
why? wouldn't investing in pharma be more of a long term high quality job creator than a failed pipeline. The current pandemic has shown that having your own well developed med tech supply chain is a matter of national security.
We agree then! Canadian vaccine's should get funded.
Windsor needs work!
Let’s all say what we want about the Federal Government, because that is fair, but in my lifetime I’ve learned to be disappointed with pretty much any effort coming out of Ottawa YET this time around I find myself grudgingly admiring and supporting the Feds. I see them going hard and refusing to take the foot off the gas at a time when anything less would be fucking criminal. Now I know the size of target a comment like this presents but I just want to voice my support and admiration for a group who I see as fighting for us and our economy.
I honestly think one form of covid will stick around and linger for years and we will be taking a yearly coronavirus shot along with a flu shot. So we will need to have our own supply come late 2021 and beyond.
I'm not sure I understand the point. By the time this plant is up and running the government is already planning to have nearly everyone vaccinated thus making it redundant. At least for Covid
Edit: I understand the use for this in the future beyond this pandemic. All I'm saying is this isnt the silver bullet for this ongoing pandemic.
It's also an insurance policy in case we don't get our contracted vaccines from overseas.
Also in case we don't need this insurance policy, Canada can provide these extra dosages to developing countries as a humanitarian effort.
I see this as a win/win
There will be future pandemics.
More than likely you will need boosters in the years ahead.
This is the best answer. They are already working on a booster to more specifically target the SA variant at this very company. There are also very likely to be other variants that pop up before all of this is over. Boosters are going to be needed.
This was the closest to a silver bullet we could have conjured up, given where we started. Had the French vaccine panned out we might have been able to produce for sanofi but we had no existing ties to Moderna or Pfizer that would have made them likely to license it to us straight off the bat. And their technology isn’t something we currently had — it’s new and still uncommon.
It’d be nice if we’d had a facility before now, but we spun this up relatively fast. It won’t fix our current problems with supply, but it is good insurance against any problems with supply still affecting us next winter, so I’ll take it.
I’m very happy to know we are less likely to get screwed over in the next pandemic. And Novavax has promising innovations for other vaccines as well, including flu. We still sometimes have shortages and delays even for our annual flu vaccine delivery so this can only help. An annual flu/Covid booster manufactured right here to meet our needs would be fantastic.
What was the situation with Sanofi? Wasn’t aware of that! I thought we tried to hedge our bets on CanSino :s
Sanofi/GSK were working on their own vaccine candidate but it hasn’t panned out; they never got far enough in successful trials for production agreements but since we have vaccine facilities for both, we’d have been a good candidate country for production if they had succeeded. Sanofi basically gave up and will produce for Pfizer now; we won’t be part of that, though, as our facilities don’t do mRNA. (This is all part of why the EU vaccine flap is happening. EU bet big on Sanofi because of France, then were left scrambling for other vaccine contracts when Sanofi didn’t have success.)
Thanks for the explanation!
Comment deleted by user
Current targets say fall, but I’m not sure if this has been revised given the delays ins shipments
Definitely not this summer. End of the year is possible.
Comment deleted by user
It's not going to work out like that unless the Feds' target of September comes and goes and a lot of us who are younger than 50 are still lining up to get our first shot around Remembrance Day or even right before Christmas.
Assuming that construction is finished by summer as planned (say early August as the midpoint of the season), the Feds then need to inspect and certify the facilities. Assuming then the Feds grant certification, production couldn't start until this fall at the earliest.
No, they were originally stating September, and the latest I saw they were still trying to stick to that. I can't that occurring myself, and would expect end of the year, or early 2022.
There isn't a silver bullet though. For all the criticism about the vaccine issue, I don't see many solutions. We can't control what Europe refuses to export. We can't go back in time and ramp up our vaccine manufacturing ability.
In the best case, our shipments of Pfizer and Moderna ramp up and this is needed only to get us to the finish line. Worst case, this is our only source of vaccine. But that worst case needs to be accounted for
Canada will start producing vaccines for other poorer countries most likely. Canada was praising it could vaccinate everyone in the country and have an abundance left over at the beginning to ship to other poorer countries that can't afford the vaccine. at the beginning.
They need to be seen as doing something after the recent disaster that is the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine deliveries.
There's a good chance we will need to be vaccinated every year. The vaccine is only effective for a few months, not forever.
Source on it being effective for a few months?
google.ca
Lol so no source
The government is not planning to have everyone vaccinated within the next 2-3 months, which is when the plant would be operational. So no, this will manufacturing plant will help in the vaccination effort greatly, especially considering all the delays being released by Pfizer and Moderna.
You have way too much faith in the government if you actually believe that this facility will be operational in 2-3 months. I'd be surprised if it is actually pumping out vaccines by the end of the year.
lol. My question would be why didn't they just build this last year (at least the frame work for it). Instead of bitching about the conservatives shutting down the project in the past if it was only going to take months to build? If they did, we could've domestically produced vaccines... well... now?
They did start building this last year, the news is what vaccine they'll make there. The facility is already under construction and has been for months.
Ah. Good. At least they're doing something actively and proactively to fight against this pandemic
Trying to save face after a massive fuck up. They should have been upgrading plants from the beginning.
spending money for the sake of good publicity. its the liberal way
Conservatives: "We need to bring vaccine production to Canada!"
Also Conservatives: "No, not like this!"
Shocker, its in Quebec
Its a lab that we've had for decades...
"because Novavax first has to get its vaccine approved, the National Research Council has to finish building a new facility in Montreal where the doses will be made, and that facility has to be certified to make the vaccines."
Third paragraph of the article.
The article is correct, but incomplete. It's actually a new wing at an existing vaccine research facility. Calling it a new facility is technically correct, but they put it there because its right next to one of Canada's top vaccine research labs.
https://nrc.canada.ca/en/covid-19-response-building-infrastructure
Funny how I knew that before I read the article.
Comment deleted by user
We... did? You have to build and certify a facility before you can actually use it...
This is great! Good job Trudeau! :)
Comment deleted by user
Did you bother to look this up before writing that? This was started last summer, well over 6 months ago. They spent $125 million to upgrade the NRC facility so it could produce vaccines. They ran in to some issues but it will be ready by the summer.
Comment deleted by user
They already had facilities. India is a huge force in pharma manufacturing. Can’t sign a deal before you have a functional facility available.
They had already had a deal with Norovax. That’s what the $125 million to upgrade the facility last summer was for. Again, well over 6 months ago. The government wasn’t just sitting around. This recent announcement was the purchase agreement. I get that people badly want to make this political but the Liberals have handled this well considering how unprecedented this all was.
A reasonable guess based on the article's mentioning of how these kinds of negotiations have been happening for several months already is that neither side could agree on anything constructive. It could have been that the NRC was asking for too much leeway at Big Pharma's expense, Big Pharma doing the converse with the NRC, or a bit of both. Considering how much leverage Big Pharma has in this pandemic, the NRC probably needed to swallow some pride and cave in more just so that Novavax would agree on allowing NRC to begin fairly small-scale production of its vaccine here. 2 million doses a month for a double-dose vaccine is fairly small even for Canada when you realize that they'd cover vaccination for 1 million people or barely 2.5% of the country's population per month.
Another point is that the NRC's construction project has been happening kinda-sorta for at least a year already and the urgency to finish the job is finally here. The sad reality is that even if the NRC and any member of Big Pharma had agreed to begin licensed Canadian production of a vaccine last summer, there would have been no physical capability to do so until sometime this year at the earliest.
I do agree with Attaran though in general on the point of setting up additional domestic infrastructure for vaccine production. It's blatantly unsustainable for a country like Canada to rely this much on buying its way out of a pandemic by splurging on vaccines made elsewhere. If we were in something like the EU, the Feds could somewhat justify buying vaccines instead but as a larger group which could yield volume discounts or more negotiating power with Big Pharma. In any case, our only serious trade bloc membership is NAFTA (and we've seen what happens when the only real power in the bloc forbids exports of its vaccines) since TPP11 is still basically a footnote.
Where in Montreal? Just Curious
The NRC's Royalmount facility:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Biotechnology+Research+Institute+of+the+National+Research+Council+of+Canada/@45.4721303,-73.7275874,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xf77abec7df0f4326!8m2!3d45.4872207!4d-73.672806
Comment deleted by user
RIP Super Sexe
Oui
For some reason I find myself remembering when I was in the army and the garbage we were issued that was made in Quebec.
And....because of the poor decision making with the CanSino vaccine, it’s going to be another two month delay.
When's the last time you heard of a large construction project being completed on time and under budget? And heaven forbid if the inspection doesn't go well.
That being said, this is a good thing to be built.
Construction was started many months ago, and seems to be on track. It's important to note that the building is already there, the production is being set up in the Biotechnology Research Institute of the National Research Council.
I'm guessing that the negotiations were secret but the factory should be up only a few months after approval.
TRUDEAU DOES IT AGAIN.
I read this article as "Opposition wants more government transparency so it can find more items to nitpick and criticize irrespective of having no strategy of their own".
All I heard today was good news after good news. I find it amazing that everyone wants to criticize when in fact so much good work is being done. People seem to think you can build a vaccine manufacturing line in minutes, that all we need to do is open the doors and the manufacturers will of course step in, and that in general we are doomed.
The Novavax results to date, still be finalized appear to indicate a high degree of effectiveness of their vaccine for at least the original variant of Covid. It will need tweaking, as will they all.
The EU does not hate Canada, nor is it freezing exports to Canada. People are really miscategorizing the controls the EU is enacting. I do feel the govt should stay on top of matters, which it is quite obvious they are doing with even the PM speaking to the head of the EU. But Canada and exports to Canada are not the center or even in the periphery of the issues overseas. Moderna supply is unaffected by the dispute and I don't expect Pfizer to be caught up in it to any great extent either. And as I believe Johnston & Johnston will soon be approved once that happens it will really be a moot point since their production capability is enormous.
Again too late
Big if true
Aren’t we all supposed to be vaccinated by September with Pfizer vaccine? There is no way this facility goes into distribution before 2021. So another canadian failure tis going to be.
Hopefully we will keep vaccine production in Canada and the next Conservative Prime Minister won't close/sell it like Stephen did
Well that’s good news but my only question is why Novavax? It’s still gonna be a while till it’s approved right?
It’s going to be a while before construction on the facility is finished. But reading through some info on it the storage temperature of 2 to 8 degrees would be a game changer for large scale distribution.
Pfizer is basically a no go for vaccinations outside of hospitals, and moderna is only slightly better. Johnson and Johnson isn’t effective enough for heard immunity.
Moderna can be stored in a fridge for 30 days. It's not an issue at all.
Transporting it to rural areas like Nunavut is
We should have a government run vaccine research and development centre in Canada. If I have to pay crazy amount of taxes every year, I rather it go to something useful.
I wonder if this facility was the one that right wing idiots were postulating that was going to be a covid concentration camp.
Good news.
But the timelines are dampening my hopes of a Covid free Summer of '21.
What should of been done in thee first place!
Why did it take the current federal government a whole year to decide to invest in Canadian Biotechnology and produce our own vaccines? I’m sure the everyday person a the same thoughts and assumptions that we were already doing this. You would have thought it was a great opportunity for economic growth and would have been the first choice before sending our hard earned dollars overseas. Why are we surprised that now we get gouged and sent to back of the line by companies like Pfizer? Who cares that you secured millions of doses. BS, you secured shit.
Covid is whats gonna kill the anti-vaxxers like white American cops kill black people
Canada is a failure. This deal should have happened months ago, or never needed to happen to begin with. Harper AND Trudeau should be tried by THE PEOPLE as traitors and dealt with accordingly. All the COVID death is on both of their bloody elitist hands. MAKE THE POLITICIANS PAY.
Wasn't Novavax also part of the US's Warp Speed program or not?