Government backtracking: Trudeau mistakenly claims Canada will receive 20M shipments of AstraZeneca vaccine

The federal government is now backtracking comments from the Prime Minister that offered a lot of hope in Canada’s troubled vaccination efforts, coming as Justin Trudeau tries to defend his government’s response to vaccine shortages.

Government officials telling 680 NEWS that the Prime Minister misspoke after Trudeau said during his COVID-19 briefing that AstraZeneca would be fulfilling its full order to send around 20-million doses of its vaccine to Canada before the end of June.

He made the comments during the question period, saying he had received assurance from the CEO of the drugmaker but officials with public service and procurement tell 680 NEWS that is not the case, saying the timeline will not be announced before Health Canada approves the vaccine.

This comes as the Prime Minister is questioned about the country’s vaccine plan.

“There’s a lot of anxiety and there’s a lot of noise going on right now,” Trudeau said Friday. “That’s why I want to reassure Canadians that we are on track.”

Trudeau has said he’s been speaking regularly with the CEOs of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna who have repeatedly assured him that they would be meeting their contractual obligations of delivering 6 million doses by the end of March.

RELATED: Health Canada could approve AstraZeneca vaccine this week

Meantime, two of the world’s leading anti-poverty organizations are criticizing Canada’s decision to draw COVID-19 vaccines from an international fund designed to help poor countries.

Speaking in Ottawa today, Trudeau said Canada is one of the leading donors to COVAX, a new international partnership under the World Health Organization.

“When wealthier countries invest in COVAX, half of that funding is for doses at home, and the other half is to buy doses for low and middle-income countries,” he said.

“In other words, our contribution is always intended to access vaccine doses for Canadians, as well as to support lower-income countries.”

Trudeau also recently announced a deal with Novavax to produce doses of its new COVID-19 vaccine at a new National Research Council biomanufacturing facility in Montreal.

The deal could help Trudeau and the country lessen the political headache caused by Canada’s lacking vaccine production capacity.

Novavax’s vaccine is likely at least two months away from being approved in Canada, while the NRC facility is still under construction and designed to produce only about two million doses a month.

Canada has a deal to buy 52-million doses from Novavax after it is approved by Health Canada.