UPDATE: Liberal minister confirms Trudeau was wrong—vaccine facility won't be ready until end of 2021
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Tuesday morning that US pharmaceutical company Novavax will produce its vaccines in Montreal, Quebec, pending approval from Health Canada, starting this summer.
The NRC Royal Mount facility will produce "tens of millions of doses in Canada, for Canadians," said Trudeau. Canada has secured 52 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, with options to purchase an additional 24 million.
"This is a major step forward to get vaccines made in Canada, for Canadians.... We need as much domestic capacity for vaccine production as possible," Trudeau said. "We won't rest until every Canadian who wants a vaccine has received one."
The Novavax protein-based vaccine has shown an efficacy rate of nearly 90 percent against the virus, with protection against the UK variant of the virus.
Trudeau said that the facility will help in Canada's current pandemic struggles, and also that the facility would be of use for years from now, in the scenario that potential variants of the virus impact Canadians.
"Our initial plan on vaccines was to sign as many different contracts with as many different producers, potential producers of vaccines, as possible. That's one of the reasons why we're now seeing many different vaccines looking at coming to Canada," said Trudeau. "We're able to confidently say that not only will we get three millions vaccinated by the end of March, we'll have everyone who needs to be vaccinated by September."
"We all hope that that is all that we're going to need. But, as we see new variants rising, as we see a virus that will continue to be present in many places around the world, we don't know what the future looks like for a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. What we're very clear on is, Canada will be developing domestic manufacturing. So regardless of what can happen in the future, we will have domestic production on top of all of our partnerships and contracts signed with companies around the world."
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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