Canada, Lagging on Administering COVID Inoculation

"Successive Liberal governments including this one, have created an unfavourable environment for investment and commercial success for innovative pharmaceutical companies in Canada."

"They have made it very difficult for Canadian CEOs to attract investment to Canada despite many attempts by the industry to work with governments to do so."

"They have made no effort to work with the innovative industry to encourage a partnership that could deliver tremendous value to the health-care system and the economy and give Canadians early access to new medicines and vaccines."

Paul Lucas, retired, past president, CEO GlaxoSmithKline  

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tara Walton

 

At the present time, Canada ranks tenth worldwide in vaccine doses administered per 100 population for COVID-19. This is the reality. The fantasy is as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau states whenever he feels cornered over Canada's poor response and logistics to the pandemic where COVID-19 has extracted a huge infection and death toll, and flattened the economy is breezily declaring "We are better on vaccines than just about every other country".

What he really means through this contorted reasoning is that Canada was too late in recognizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus wreaking havoc in the country in deciding to order vaccines against COVID. By the time his government took the necessary steps, Canada was away back in the lineup of countries taking the solid measures needed to protect their populations. What Canada did do, was sign an agreement with a Chinese pharmaceutical company, SinoVac, to partner in the development of a COVID vaccine.

This government, clearly delusional, given Beijing's reputation for volatile reaction and blunt decision-making, put its eggs in the wrong basket, and when the time came for SinoVac to send on samples of their vaccine for testing by the National Research Council as agreed, the shipment was stopped by Chinese authorities. Then, and only then, did the government in a bit of a panic order doses of vaccine from a variety of sources amounting in total to far more than Canada would ever need, vastly in excess of the population total.

The vaccines would eventually arrive, later than they should, had the government been adequately alert and resolute in its actions. So that, even as the provinces have created the required logistics for vaccine delivery and inoculations, the federal government is unable to access the number of vaccine doses required until possibly April at the earliest. Yes, there have been initial doses received, enough to vaccinate a small number of vulnerable health-compromised elderly in long-term care among whom 92 percent of the deaths in Canada have arisen.

People wait to receive a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, Israel, Tuesday, Dec. 29. 'We are a small country with a relatively good infrastructure of medicine and a lot of good-willed people who are willing to help to get the country to be vaccinated in record time,' one expert said. (Tsafrir Abayov/The Associated Press)

 

Some health-care workers whose positions make them particularly exposed to contracting COVID have also been vaccinated, reflecting a relatively tight number of individuals. The 1.2 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines set to have been received by January's end has been set back by Pfizer's declaration that shipments to Canada from its Belgian manufacturer will be cut in half, because of a factory overhaul, partially suspending operations.

Six million doses were expected by the end of March and that number too will be impacted downward, meant to vaccinate about 3 million citizens, out of a total of 38 million, so representing less than ten percent of the Canadian population, while other countries have received significantly greater numbers of doses on a population-adjusted basis. Clearly the government erred in not building a supportive relationship with vaccine makers.

Presenting as a purchaser/regulator guarantees no speedy access, and Canada went to the end of the queue in its tardy response. In point of fact the global innovative pharmaceutical industry has no home in Canada. Without full patent protection and the profit gleaned from that protection, pharmaceutical companies are unable to plow a good part of their profits back into research, innovation and development of new drugs. Back in 1968 the government of Trudeau senior enacted legislation to diminish the impact of pharmaceutical patents.

Which meant an earlier elapse of patent protection, and the rise of generic drug manufacturers in Canada taking advantage of the investment, time and innovation to produce new drugs on the part of pharmaceutical companies unprotected by full-length patents, vulnerable to generics swooping down to produce drugs at lower cost using formulae they did not generate themselves. The pharmaceutical innovators warned that without full patent protection their earnings would be reduced and their strategies to research new drugs would be impaired.

Understandably, they saw fit to move their operations elsewhere where patent protection would remain intact. Off went the industry to the United Kingdom, The United States and the European Union where an innovative-positive environment remained and there they perform their function of research and innovative development of new patented drugs. And there, the U.S., U.K. and E.U. have better, quicker access to the vaccines desperately needed to control the global pandemic in their jurisdictions.

According to a senior public health official in Israel, one of the reasons they have outdistanced all other countries in their handling of the coronavirus is attributable in large part to their ability to acquire large quantities of doses thanks to amicable relations with the pharmaceutical industry. Canada, in contrast, sent the innovative industry packing, welcoming the emergence of a generic-company oligopoly. Which doesn't produce vaccines.

The Conservative-led governments of Prime Ministers Mulroney and Harper made an effort to support the innovative pharmaceutical industry, improving the patent landscape, but recovery has been only partial and competitive patent protection still does not exist. A new federal pricing regime through the Patented Medicine Price Review Board regulations will help further stifle innovation. 

The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are delivered to the Maimonides CHSLD, Monday, December 14, 2020 in Montreal. The long-term care facility is slated to be one of the first in Canada to administer the vaccine. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz