Canada falling behind on promised vaccine donations to other countries

Canada has delivered about one-quarter of the vaccine doses it has promised to less wealthy countries and can't say when more doses will go out the door.

In 2021, Canada promised to donate 50 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from its own contracts and at least 150 million more through financial contributions to the COVAX vaccine sharing alliance.

To date, Canada has donated 12.7 million direct doses and $545 million in cash to buy 87 million more. 

COVAX says it cannot yet report specifics on the doses purchased because it's still negotiating prices with vaccine makers. 

Canada's promise was that all doses and cash donations would be delivered by the end of 2022, but critics — including World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — say countries like Canada have been hoarding vaccines at the expense of poorer nations.

"Ending health inequity remains the key to ending the pandemic," Tedros said in late December. Throughout 2021, experts warned that the more the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads, the faster it will mutate, potentially giving rise to a new variant that will evade vaccines already given.

That risk became reality in November with the discovery of Omicron, a variant with so many mutations it is causing millions of infections in fully vaccinated individuals. 

While the vaccines appear to be doing well against severe disease, the explosion in new cases has still stressed hospitals and sent Canadians back into the lockdowns and school closures they had hoped were behind them. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told The Canadian Press during a year-end interview in December, that Canada was "continuing to do more than our share" on vaccine donations. 

"As people know, unfortunately, Canada no longer has a capacity to produce vaccines in our country so we don't have a domestic production that we can direct towards the world," he said.

"But what we are doing with the contracts and the vaccine supply we have secured from other countries is send those vaccines that we purchased, that we paid for, that we're not going to be using, to the world."

Adam Houston, medical policy and advocacy officer at Doctors Without Borders Canada, said Canada is pulling its weight when it comes to monetary donations but can't say the same about vaccine donations. 

He said Canada needs to put the same kind of pressure on the companies to deliver doses for donation as it did to speed up deliveries to Canada last year.

"When these doses have been meant for Canadian arms, Canada has frequently been able to move up the delivery of these doses," he said.