Almost 2M more doses expected by mid-March: Fortin

A month-long slowdown in Canada's COVID-19 vaccine deliveries should end next week, with the single biggest shipment of vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech to date.

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander overseeing Canada's vaccine distribution, says Pfizer has confirmed it will ship 400,000 doses to Canada starting Monday.

Over the next four weeks, Canada should get almost 1.8 million doses from Pfizer, and another 168,000 from Moderna.

But Moderna's next shipment on Feb. 22 is only two-thirds of what it was supposed to be.

NEW: Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin says 168k Moderna doses will arrive week of Feb. 22. This is down from 249k originally expected. On Pfizer, 444k doses expected each week for the first two weeks of March. No info on second half, but “on track” to get 4M total for quarter.

— Abigail Bimman (@AbigailBimman) February 11, 2021

The company is struggling to ramp up production with its Swiss manufacturing partner Lonza.

A spokeswoman for Pfizer Canada says the upgrades to the company's plant in Belgium are complete and production is back on track to meet Canada's order for four million doses by the end of March.