My Baci

More on Canada’s vaccine supply now, from the Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco:

Global health authorities have criticised countries for making private deals that they say push up vaccine prices and represent a form of “double-dipping” – taking supplies from Covax while at the same time signing private deals that make it harder for the facility to secure doses that would be shared equitably.

Other countries that have reserved significant supplies through side deals with pharmaceutical companies, including Australia, Israel and the UK, did not elect to receive or were not allocated any vaccine from the first batch of allocations announced on Wednesday.

Canada opted to receive 1,903,200 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through Covax, representing about 5% of its population – above the average that other countries will receive.

Canada and UK among countries with most vaccine doses ordered per personRead more

Some of the vaccine doses that Canada has reserved in private deals come from candidates that are still in development, and may not be approved. But taking into account just those that have released phase 3 results, Canada still has enough reserved to vaccinate its population at least four times over.

Chile and New Zealand, who have also made extensive private deals, were also both scheduled to receive enough vaccine through Covax over the next months to cover more than 5% of their people, the data showed.

In contrast, many of the countries that were allocated Covid-19 vaccine doses on Wednesday’s list have made no direct supply deals and have no other source of vaccinations but Covax:

The United States – the worst-affected country worldwide in terms of both the number of coronavirus cases and the number of people who have died in the pandemic, has passed a death toll of 450,000, according to Johns Hopkins University as it approaches a staggering half a million lives lost.

The Biden administration has warned that the US toll could pass 600,000 before the virus is under control.

Canada is entitled to receive shots under the Covax scheme, in which advance purchases by wealthy nations are used to underwrite vaccine development and subsidise doses for poorer countries. It has contributed about $345m, half of which was to pay for its own doses.

But Global health authorities have criticised countries for making private deals – of which Canada has made enough to secure 9.6 doses per person – that they say push up vaccine prices and represent a form of “double-dipping” – taking supplies from Covax while at the same time signing private deals that make it harder for the facility to secure doses that would be shared equitably.

Other countries that have reserved significant supplies through side deals with pharmaceutical companies, including Australia, Israel and the UK, did not elect to receive or were not allocated any vaccine from the first batch of allocations announced on Wednesday.

More from this report by the Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco:

Canada is set to receive a significant haul of vaccines over the next months through a platform designed to maximise supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the most doses-per-person in the world through direct deals with pharmaceutical companies.

Chile and New Zealand, which have also made controversial side deals to secure their own vaccine supplies, will also receive above-average numbers of doses, according to the interim allocation schedule released by Covax on Wednesday.

Covax, a mechanism to distribute Covid-19 doses fairly around the world, aims to deliver about 330m doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to 145 countries by June, volumes that it says will be enough to cover an average of 3.3% of each country’s population.

Ottawa has led the world in direct deals with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, reserving enough to cover approximately 9.6 doses per person, according to Guardian analysis.

The Guardian’s Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco report:

Hello and welcome to today’s live coronavirus coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Canada is set to receive a significant haul of vaccines over the next months through a platform designed to maximise supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the most doses-per-person in the world through direct deals with pharmaceutical companies.

The Globe and Mail reports that Canada will be the only G7 country worldwide to accept vaccines from the scheme.

My colleagues Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco report that Canada is entitled to receive shots under the Covax scheme, in which advance purchases by wealthy nations are used to underwrite vaccine development and subsidise doses for poorer countries.

But Ottawa has also led the world in direct deals with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, reserving enough to cover approximately 9.6 doses per person, according to Guardian analysis.

More on this shortly. For now, here are the other key recent developments:

• Regulators in Belgium are the the latest in Europe to advise against the administration of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to older people due a lack of data about its efficacy.
• Switzerland has withheld approval for the Oxford/AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine, its drugs regulator said today.
• Leaders in Europe are recklessly endangering their own public’s health by using self-serving point-scoring to attack Britain’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, UK health experts have warned. “The views coming out from politicians in Europe are in striking contrast to the scientific view reached by the European regulator,” a former medicines regulator chief said.
• Greece’s new coronavirus infections rose by more than 1,000 for a second consecutive day, with health authorities adding 1,151 to the country’s tally after a month of the daily figure remaining in the triple digits.
• Vets in Germany have trained sniffer dogs to detect the coronavirus in human saliva samples with 94% accuracy.
• The Covax facility scheme aims to distribute at least 330m doses in the first half of 2021, its co-leaders announced on Wednesday. It has also struck a deal with the Serum Institute of India for up to 1.1bn doses of AstraZeneca and Novavax’s vaccines for $3 per dose for low- and middle-income countries.
• AstraZeneca and Oxford University are aiming to develop a next-generation vaccine to tackle new variants as early as by the autumn, a senior executive at the manufacturer has told Reuters.