China News Service, Toronto, February 2 (Reporter Yu Ruidong) The Canadian federal government announced a series of new measures on February 2 to promote the production and development of new coronavirus vaccines and related therapeutic drugs in the country.
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau disclosed to the media in Ottawa that the Canadian government has signed a memorandum with the US pharmaceutical company Novavax (Novavax) to seek to produce Novavax at the Canadian National Research Council Biological Products Manufacturing Center in Montreal. The new crown vaccine.
On January 14, local time, a merchant in downtown Toronto, Canada temporarily refused to allow customers to enter the store to provide customers with an appointment pick-up service.
Ontario, Canada's most populous province, where Toronto is located, implemented the "home order" from that day.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Yu Ruidong
According to the memorandum, once Novavac’s vaccine candidate and production facility are approved by the Ministry of Health, the vaccine can be produced in Montreal.
Canadian officials have so far pre-purchased more than 400 million doses of new crown vaccine from many pharmaceutical companies around the world, including 76 million doses of vaccine ordered from Novavax.
At present, Canada has approved the vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech of the United States, and the vaccine of Moderna of the United States, and has been distributed and vaccinated nationwide, but it is currently experiencing this The supply of two vaccines is seriously insufficient.
However, in response to the media, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Shang Pengfei said frankly that the production of Novavax vaccine in Canada is likely to wait until the end of this year.
On the same day, the Canadian government also announced that it will invest up to 25.1 million Canadian dollars in Vancouver-based biotechnology company Precision Nanosystems (PNI) to help it build a biological manufacturing center and expand the production capacity of ribonucleic acid vaccines and future genetic drugs in Canada.
The Canadian government announced in October last year that it would invest 18.2 million Canadian dollars in the company to support its development of a new crown vaccine.
The Canadian government also decided to provide a maximum of 14 million Canadian dollars in investment to Edesa Biotech, a biopharmaceutical company in the Greater Toronto Area, to advance the study of monoclonal antibody therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is the main cause of death in patients with new crowns. .
Canadian Chief Public Health Officer Tan Yongshi reminded that there are signs that the mutated new coronavirus that has appeared in the United Kingdom and South Africa has spread to a certain extent in Canada.
According to a survey of about 18,000 medical workers released by Statistics Canada, about 77% of the medical workers interviewed said that their mental health deteriorated during the new crown epidemic.
After implementing measures to restrict social and economic activities for a long time, some provinces began to loosen up.
Quebec announced that shops, barber shops, museums and other “non-essential services” can be reopened from February 8, but the curfew that the province has implemented since the end of last year will not be cancelled.
Alberta has also planned to restart dine-in restaurants and relax gym restrictions.
However, British Columbia in Western Canada announced that the state of emergency in the province will be extended until February 16.
As of the evening of February 2, Canada has reported a total of more than 786,000 cases, and the number of new cases in a single day has dropped significantly compared to a week ago.
Nearly 717,000 cases recovered, 20,213 deaths, and 49,562 active cases.
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