Ottawa has secured 12 million doses of the second-generation COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna. The date of delivery of these doses adapted to the Omicron variant remains unknown.
“A delivery of 1.5 million doses of the bivalent vaccine candidate will be accelerated from 2023 to 2022,” the company said in a statement on Monday. The renegotiation of the contract between Moderna and Ottawa thus announced also provides for the purchase of 4.5 million additional doses. The planned supply of 6 million older generation doses has also been “converted” to purchases of new generation doses.
Ultimately, the federal government plans to procure at least 12 million doses of this new vaccine.
This booster dose targets both the original strain of the virus and that of the “Omicron variant family”.
“In terms of gain, the level of antibodies increases by 8 times against the BA.1 variant compared to the vaccine we currently have. [Le niveau d’anticorps] is 5.4 times higher against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants,” Moderna Canada CEO Patricia Gauthier boasted in an interview with The duty. The duration of the protection conferred by the vaccine should also be prolonged, according to the studies of the pharmaceutical.
These deliveries are conditional on the approval of the vaccine by Health Canada. Moderna filed its application for authorization with the Canadian regulator on June 30. It is impossible to know when this new vaccine will therefore be available for Canadian arms.
The production of doses of this new vaccine is “very advanced”. The vials can be transported from Moderna’s American factory to Canada “within days” of approval from the authorities, according to Ms. Gauthier.
Canadian medical authorities “are working very quickly to revise the submissions from Moderna and BioNTech-Pfizer,” the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Dr. Theresa Tam, commented last Friday. The results will come “as quickly as possible”.
“What we are checking is whether the bivalent vaccine has an additional benefit,” she said in this pandemic update.
Nearly 50 million doses of Moderna’s first vaccine have been delivered to Canada. The price of these doses is confidential. According to the Financial Times, the price of Moderna’s vaccine exceeds $32 a dose.
British authorities were the first in the world, they say, to approve this new generation of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine last week.