Canada signs deal with Novavax to make COVID-19 vaccine in Montreal

OTTAWA – Canada has made an agreement with Novavax to produce COVID-19 vaccines in this country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce this morning the deal for domestic vaccine production at a new National Research Council biomanufacturing facility.

More details are also expected on making some COVID-19 therapeutic drugs at other facilities in Canada.

The deal could help Trudeau tamp down the political headache caused by Canada’s skeletal vaccine production capacity.

But Novavax’s vaccine is likely at least two months away from being approved in Canada, while the NRC facility is still under construction and designed to produce only about two million doses a month.

Canada has a deal to buy 52-million doses from Novavax after it is approved by Health Canada.

Canada’s inability to produce any COVID-19 vaccines at home has left the country at the mercy of foreign governments, who could at any time slam the doors shut to vaccine exports until their own people are vaccinated.

That risk became ever more real this week as Europe’s new export controls on vaccines take hold, putting at risk Canada’s entire supply of COVID-19 vaccines.

Maryland-based Novavax applied Friday to start the regulatory review process for its experimental vaccine, after announcing a clinical trial in the United Kingdom showed it was more than 89 per cent effective against COVID-19.

The trial in the U.K. showed significant effectiveness against both the original virus behind COVID-19, and the variant known as B. 1.17 that was first identified there. A smaller Phase 2 trial in South Africa showed the vaccine was also effective against a variant that first emerged there, known as B. 1.351.

More than half the COVID-19 cases identified in Novavax’s British trial were the B. 1.17 variant and 90 per cent of the cases in South Africa were B. 1.351.

More to come. 

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