Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
If this meeting had taken place a week ago, my message today would be much more encouraging. Until about a week ago, Saskatchewan had been receiving a steady supply of vaccines from the federal government. While our provincial vaccine administration plan continues to be very effective, we are now virtually at a standstill with no vaccines having been delivered to Saskatchewan in over a week. Limited quantities are now expected in the next few weeks.
The vaccines we are receiving are going into the arms of Saskatchewan people as quickly as possible. Saskatchewan has the highest percentage of vaccines administered amongst the provinces. In fact, we have now administered 108% of the vaccines we have received. I know this sounds like a mathematical impossibility, but it's because our very efficient health care workers have been able to extract an extra dose out of some of the vials of the vaccine. I'll come back to that in a second.
This efficiency has lead us to a debate about relabelling the vials, which is a move that Saskatchewan certainly does not support.
I want to talk you through a brief history of our vaccine rollout in Saskatchewan to date. When Health Canada formally approved the Pfizer vaccine in December, we were ready. That same day we announced our vaccine delivery plan. As with many provinces, it was based largely on the national advisory committee and immunization guidelines. Saskatchewan's chief medical health officer did some modifications to accommodate Saskatchewan's demographics and logistical requirements.
Phase one of our vaccine delivery plan began on December 22. It focused on immunizing priority populations that were at a higher risk of exposure to the virus and at more risk of serious illness or death. This included certain front-line health care workers, long-term and personal care home residents and staff, seniors over 70 and all residents over 50 years of age in the remote northern communities. Due to logistical requirements of the Pfizer vaccine, we initially delivered it to urban centres that had the ultra-cold freezers. The Moderna vaccine was delivered to remote northern communities.
We post Saskatchewan's vaccination numbers on the Government of Saskatchewan website and in a daily news release, so the public remains informed of our progress.
Phase two of the vaccine delivery plan is expected to being in April. This will be the beginning of our mass immunization. However, these plans are in jeopardy now. The Government of Saskatchewan's ability to vaccinate our residents is entirely dependent on a reliable supply of vaccine and reliable information about the number of vaccines we expect to receive each week. Simply put, we need more vaccines. We need more reliable information about when we're receiving those vaccines.
The flow of information is almost as important as the flow of vaccines because these vaccines are far more complex to transport, store and administer than, say, the annual flu vaccine. Our health care workers are absolutely up to the task, but as you know, Saskatchewan is a large province with many remote communities. We need reliable information to plan appointments, transportation, refrigeration and the deployment of our health care workers.
When we have received the vaccines as scheduled, our program runs extremely smoothly. However, in the past few days we have had sudden and unexpected schedule changes, causing us to have to cancel clinics in communities where they had already been announced. We need to ensure that everyone who receives their first shot is able to get their second shot in a timely manner. Again, this is extremely difficult to plan and execute without a reliable supply of vaccines and without reliable information.
The announcement that both Pfizer and Moderna are delaying expected shipments of vaccines to Saskatchewan has forced our government to revisit this plan. Saskatchewan's February 8 shipment is to be a third of what was originally promised. Prior to the recent announcements from Pfizer and Moderna, we were only able to project receiving enough vaccines in the first quarter to fully immunize about half of our priority one people. Now, completing first and second doses for our priority population is becoming challenging. Simply put, Saskatchewan will not be able to vaccinate as many people as originally planned.
Saskatchewan is asking the federal government to do everything it can to ensure the vaccines are made available as soon as possible and that the province is receiving reliable information about vaccine deliveries. Information that suddenly changes at the last minute creates more challenges.
Saskatchewan is also very concerned about Pfizer wanting to relabel their vaccine vials to say they contain six doses instead of five, which will effectively result in a reduction of the number of vaccines the provinces are receiving. Health Canada should not allow this to happen.
Earlier I indicated that our health care workers have been able to get an extra dose out of the Pfizer. However, this should be viewed as an added benefit, not the standard for counting the number of doses. On average, we have been able to get a sixth dose from about half of the Pfizer vials. For a number of reasons we cannot consistently count on getting those six doses out of every vial. That's why Pfizer should not be allowed to reduce its shipments to Canada by simply relabelling the vials and counting six instead of five doses.
My message here today is Saskatchewan has been getting the vaccines into people's arms as quickly as we get them, but we simply need more vaccines. We need to get more reliable information about when we're getting those vaccines and simply relabelling the vials does not amount to more vaccines.
We all want this pandemic to be over and things to return to normal. That will happen when we have a significant portion of our population vaccinated. Our province and our health care workers are ready to do their part, so please just get them some vaccines.