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Canada to discard about 13.6 million Oxford-AstraZeneca doses Coronavirus disease vaccine, because it could not find any recipients at home and abroad.
Canada signed a contract with AstraZeneca in 2020 to receive 20 million doses of the vaccine, with 2.3 million Canadians receiving at least one dose, mostly between March and June 2021.
Following concerns over a rare but potentially deadly blood clot from AstraZeneca in the spring of 2021, Canada is focused on using an ample supply of mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
In July 2021, Canada pledged to donate the remaining purchased supply, approximately 17.7 million doses. But in a statement on Tuesday, Health Canada said that despite efforts to meet that commitment, 13.6 million doses have expired and will have to be discarded.
“Due to limited demand for vaccines and challenges in distribution and uptake in recipient countries, they are not accepted,” the statement said.
Canada has donated a total of 8.9 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with 4.8 million from its main supply and 4.1 million from the COVAX vaccine sharing program.
About 85 per cent of Canadians are considered fully vaccinated, compared to 61 per cent of the world’s population and only 16 per cent of people living in the world’s poorest countries.
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