Canada set to waste $1 billion worth of COVID-19 vaccines

Auditor General Karen Hogan said there were steps the government could and should have taken to avoid some of this wastage

OTTAWA – Canada is set to dispose of $1 billion worth of COVID vaccines before the end of this year, on top of tens of millions of other doses that have already expired, according to the auditor general.

Auditor General Karen Hogan released a report on the government’s vaccine program on Tuesday, and found generally the government did a good job procuring and distributing vaccines to provinces and Canadians in a timely way, but it failed to avoid wastage.

In her report Hogan found that there are tens of millions of doses in provincial and federal warehouses.

“At the end of May 2022, there were 32.5 million doses in inventory, and using unclassified and public documentation, we estimated those doses to be worth about $1 billion,” reads Hogan’s report.

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Hogan found that out of 169 million doses the government had received, 84.1 million had been given to Canadians, with a further 32.5 million in storage as of May. Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Tuesday that 10.8 million of those doses have since expired.

Another 13.6 million doses had already expired when Hogan did her audit, while 15.3 million doses have been donated and another 21.7 million have been offered for donation with no countries identified to take them yet.

The government ordered vaccines from seven different companies early in the pandemic, before any of the potential vaccine makers had proved succesful, ordering tens of millions more than Canada could possibly use. Hogan said many countries were in the same boat as Canada.

“I would invite all of us back in March of 2020 and the environment that was going on then when the government entered into advanced purchase agreements. There was a global rush to develop a vaccine no one knew which vaccine companies would develop viable vaccines,” she said.

The government has previously said it donated 50 million doses, but the auditor revealed that includes 13.6 million that expired shortly after being donated, 21.7 million that have been identified for donation, but have not been shipped and only 15.3 million that have actually been used overseas.

The government has also helped developing countries pay for their own vaccines, contributing enough money for 90 million more doses.

Hogan said the 21.7 million waiting for a home will also expire if the government doesn’t find a country that needs them. She said the government’s efforts to donate vaccines have run into a lack of demand with many other rich nations trying to donate their doses as well.

“That market saturated resulting in the Canadian government not being as successful as they could, but in my view it was a prudent approach.”

International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan said demand in developing nations has been lower than hoped, but it still exists and Canada intends to ship more doses. He said part of the challenge is ensuring the developing countries have the infrastructure needed to innoculate their populations.

“One of the things that we’re focused on now is actually reinforcing the health systems within those nations. So if a pandemic was to come back, that we would have the ability to be able to equitably distribute vaccines,” he said.

Duclos said, despite the wastage, he believes their approach to vaccine purchases was the right one.

“This strategy while producing a surplus proved very successful. Canada was among the first three countries in the world to administer doses in December 2020,” he said.

Hogan said part of the blame for the wastage is the government’s system for managing vaccines, a software program created specifically for the task called VaccineConnect. She said that the program has tools that could be used to better keep track of doses.

“We also found that minimizing wastage was affected by the agency’s delay in implementing important functionalities of VaccineConnect,” she wrote.

The VaccineConnect system was designed and managed by outside auditors Deloitte who received a nearly $60 million contract for the system, $37.4 million of which has since been spent.

Hogan said in her report that there were issues getting information from provinces and territories both on vaccine usage and vaccine safety, and that many provinces simply declined to provide information to Health Canada.

Conservative MP Kelly Block, the party’s procurement critic, said the Liberals should have done more to ensure the systems were working properly.

“The real issue was with VaccineConnect because there was no ability to have eyes on where those vaccines were being distributed on the expiry dates, and supply chain visibility was an issue,” she said.

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