“Canada is now contracted to receive up to 168,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine before the end of December, pending Health Canada approval,” Trudeau said in a news conference, according to Reuters.
“We have now confirmed that next week we will receive about 200,000 of our total early order of doses from Pfizer,” he added. If the Moderna vaccine is approved for use in Canada, Trudeau says deliveries of the vaccine can be expected within 48 hours of its approval.
Health Canada is in the final stages of its review of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate from Massachusetts-based Moderna, and a final decision on authorization could come as early as this week, reports CBC Canada.
“As with the early shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, this moves us even further forward on getting Canadians protected as quickly as possible,” Trudeau said. “We are very, very well positioned.”
The Moderna vaccine is also poised for receiving regulatory approval in the United States after a detailed data review by Food and Drug Administration scientists confirmed the two-shot regimen was 94 percent effective in a clinical trial and carried no serious safety concerns.
The Washington Post is reporting the Moderna vaccine could be approved as early as Friday, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the issue.
The U.S. is preparing to ship almost 6 million doses of the Moderna vaccines to 3,285 locations in the first week. The 54-page FDA document published Tuesday morning positions the Moderna vaccine to follow the same historic track as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Canada, the United States, and The United Kingdom have the distinction of being the three nations in the world that have approved the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNTech SE. And now, it looks like the Moderna vaccine is on track to become the second vaccine approved.
