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COVID Vaccine : Complex Planning and Hope

"They're very expensive machines and facilities tend not to just have them sitting idle with excess capacity so you try and maximize the output, you maximize your markets."
"You could crank out boxes and boxes and boxes of pills and let them sit on the shelf and have no adverse problem. With vaccines, you're dealing with temperature-sensitive products."
"Who knows what type of vaccine is ultimately going to prove to be effective against this thing? So it would require a little bit of the planets aligning for us to be producing this stuff here."
"We do have capacity here. I think the challenge is going to be what type of vaccine is developed."
"Whether it's Canada, whether you're in the world, the challenge is the same. It's a global epidemic, and it's going to require a global solution."
Andrew Casey, president, BIOTECanada

"That's the fastest we can possibly do and that means we could be double-shifting, and we might even have to go through working around the clock."
"The idea is that we then can also work on vaccines like this one, for example, other emerging diseases, and tie it into the unique infrastructure that we have."
"They're preparing for a scale up so that immediately as you can get the approval, they can make millions of doses of this."
"This pandemic is just showing that we should have done this a few years ago. We should have prepared for this."
"When there is a real shortage, I think it's important for a country like ours to have sufficient capacity in the country."
Dr.Volker Gerdis, director, CEO, VIDO-InterVac production facility

Were a vaccine for COVID-19 to be discovered, at the present time the capacity to produce sufficient numbers of the vaccine to inoculate people in the millions of doses required across the country would be absent. Addressing that logistical problem to ensure that all Canadians be benefited by a vaccine, the federal government has made investments in upgrading production capacity across the country, in preparation for that moment when a vaccine has been proven effective and safe.

Over 100 possible vaccines are undergoing experimental research across the globe. Once a vaccine that fills all the requirements to vanquish SARS-CoV-2 is achieved, production represents the next major challenge. Produced in highly specialized manufacturing facilities equipped with expensive machinery and explicitly trained staff, vaccines must be swiftly made available to an entire population, no mean task.

According to the president of industry group BIOTECanada, companies are not in possession of a whole lot of extra capacity to service the needs of the entire Canadian population. There are a number of large pharmaceutical companies with plants in Canada, but even they on their own will be unable to produce the vaccine in required numbers. Although the annual influenza vaccine is for the most part produced domestically, only 40 percent of Canadians take the flu shot, in comparison to the COVID vaccine where the inoculation rate will be infinitely larger.

Mr. Casey of BIOTECanada explained the problem with storing vaccines; they expire quickly so no stockpile can exist. All vaccines required to prevent a large array of illnesses are produced on demand so manufacturing plants fulfill those orders while less room is left to work on emergency orders, such as in the vital production of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Of the two major investments made by government to advance vaccine production the first was $12 million for the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infections Disease Organization -- International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac) which has received tens of millions in total from government. The latest investment has been set aside to build a manufacturing facility to produce millions of doses of vaccine monthly, once its construction is completed.

Another $44 million meant to expand a National Research Council Facility in Montreal to enable it to manufacture vaccines has been granted, so the facility can enable the laboratory to produce 70,000 to 100,000 doses monthly, with greater expansion to follow. According to Dr.Gerdts, director of the VIDO-InterVac facility, the company had submitted a proposal to government to expand its facility, and once the pandemic arrived, funding swiftly arrived.

The Saskatoon facility is equipped with a large containment lab that will provide for the integration of research and manufacturing. A COVID-19 vaccine candidate is already being tested in the laboratory, and if the tests prove successful the move to human tests will follow. Should the tests go well, and the government grant approval to expedite normal approval procedure once the vaccine is proven safe, production can proceed speedily.

Large fermenter tanks will be used to manufacture the lab's vaccine, such that the plant should be able to produce millions of doses monthly, once construction is completed. "The whole pipeline from beginning to end is being looked at from a preparedness perspective", added Canada's chief public health officer, Dr.Theresa Tam. Chicken eggs are used to grow some vaccines, but a new process that creates vaccines in tobacco leaves has been developed by a Montreal company, while others make use of large fermenters like the VIDO[Intervac facility.