Moderna delays drove down Manitoba's daily doses last week, but province expects pace to pick up

A delay in the delivery of more doses of the Moderna slowed the pace of Manitoba's immunization campaign by more than a third in the last week, but the province expects the speed to pick up again as larger shipments arrive in the coming weeks.

From April 26 to May 3, the seven-day average daily doses administered fell by 34.5 per cent, from an all-time high of 11,754 to 7,689 on May 3.

On Sunday, May 2, 4,164 doses were recorded, the lowest number of doses in more than a month. On Monday, another 6,369 were recorded. 

Within that time, the province received 37,440 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 22,100 doses of Moderna. Another 66,850 doses of Pfizer arrived on Wednesday.

Weekly Pfizer shipments are expected to ramp up to 87,750 by the end of May, according to the provincial vaccine implementation task force.

The shipment of Moderna, which arrived on  April 30, was originally scheduled to arrive the week of April 19.

It had been slashed in half, from 44,000 doses to 22,100, with 11,000 of those going to First Nations partners, said Johanu Botha, operations lead on the vaccine implementation task force.

As a result, the province wasn't able to push excess Moderna doses through the large Winnipeg pop-up site at 1680 Notre Dame Ave.

"We've had to send them to the required congregate living campaign... and corrections [facilities], and a couple small pop-ups outside of Winnipeg," Botha said during a technical briefing Wednesday morning.

On Tuesday, Opposition NDP Leader Wab Kinew accused the the provincial government of making a "political" decision to ramp down vaccinations over the weekends. 

"Given the fact that we're fighting a foe in this pandemic who doesn't take weekends off why are the PCs ramping down our vaccination campaigns on those days?"  Kinew said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Botha said a shipment of 36,300 Moderna doses, which the federal government said should arrive as early as this week, will enable the province to open that large Winnipeg pop-up again.

"So what I anticipate to see with this upcoming Moderna shipment is that our Sunday, or whatever day used to be lower, will be higher because we'll be able to overflow into that pop-up again," he said.

Between April 19 and 25, the province administered 50,065 doses. That number dropped to 41,797 between April 25 and May 3. 

Last week, the province projected 50,426 doses would be administered between May 3 and 9. That number has now increased to 59,195, and next week the province expects to give 82,944 shots, as the supply of Pfizer doses increases.