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Stepping up Canada’s efforts to produce COVID-19 vaccines at home, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Tuesday, February 2, that US drugmaker Novavax Inc (NASDAQ:NVAX, NVAX:US) has agreed to a tentative deal. The Maryland, US-based company is expected to manufacture its COVID-19 vaccine doses in a Montreal facility once it is approved for public use in Canada, Trudeau said.
Novavax, which applied for its COVID shot’s regulatory approval in Canada on Friday, is still working on its clinical trials. The results of its the final study is expected to take at least another month to arrive.
Stocks of Novavax Inc have ballooned by over 137 per this year and by almost 221 per cent in the last three months.
Canada’s Montreal-based COVID Shot Production Unit On The Way
Canada’s technology organization National Research Council (NRC) is the mind behind the Montreal-based COVID vaccine manufacturing facility, which was announced in August last year. Industry Minister Francois-Phillipe Champagne and the NRC had since been working on trying to reel in top international vaccine makers to produce their doses at this unit. All of the negotiations fell through at some point, until the latest agreement with Novavax.
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Minister Champagne has said that the Montreal-based facility is set to be ready by late summer, after which it will have to wait another couple of months to get certified.
Once all the boxes are ticked, Canada will only be in a position to initiate COVID-19 vaccine production in this facility near the end of 2021, Minister Champagne pointed.
Canada’s Dependence On Foreign Companies For COVID Shots To Continue
Canada is currently reliant on foreign companies for its COVID shot supplies, a vulnerable position to be in considering the recent delivery shortages as well as the European Union’s new export controls on its COVID jabs.
PM Trudeau, however, has said that the European Commission’s oral promise regarding Canada's vaccine supplies being safe from the new controls “were enough” to assure him.
The government also recently confirmed that this week’s consignments of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have begun arriving.
Preordered shipments have faced a few delivery hiccups over the last few weeks due to production slowdowns, which led to a bout of concern among Canadians. PM Trudeau then reassured that the previously booked four million Pfizer-BioNTech doses and the two million Moderna doses are still set to be delivered by the end of March.
If the shipments come in as scheduled and the inoculation process goes by smoothly, a majority of Canadians would be vaccinated for COVID-19 by September-end, i.e., before Novavax’s production even begins in Montreal.
PM Trudeau, however, believes that Canada should be equipped for domestic COVID shot manufacturing as the future of this illness is not known.
The Canadian government has also put in an investment of C$ 25.1 million in Vancouver-based genetics medicine firm Precision Nanosystems Inc in an effort to expand its domestic capacity to manufacture COVID shots.
