Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all of the members who are joining us today to give their perspectives on the matter we are discussing.
Mr. Chair, delivering the vaccine out to Canadians is a massive undertaking. Never in modern times have we seen such an unprecedented level of collaboration and co-operation. This is a team Canada effort. Our collective efforts have allowed us to prepare, build capacity and develop better ways to deliver vaccines. We developed a process so that we could deliver vaccines across the Canadian landscape within days of approved vaccines becoming available.
You heard Dany Fortin at the last committee meeting. We have built and continue to build important relationships with our federal, provincial, territorial and indigenous partners, as well as with industry and a wide range of stakeholders. These relationships allow us to come together in common purpose and to adapt to a complex situation and the rapidly evolving circumstances we are seeing today. Together we have built and tested distribution plans that meet the characteristics of these COVID-19 vaccines. The early-to-market mRNA vaccines demand special cold chain and procurement considerations. This meant our well-established procurement and distribution program would not work. Instead we took a more centralized, federal approach to obtain and distribute this vaccine.
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine needs an ultra-low temperature, as we all know, commonly known as a ULT cold chain. Ideally, this vaccine is stored and shipped at -70°C. The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine requires a frozen cold chain. This means it needs to be at -20°C, both in storage and during transportation. The capacity for storing these vaccines varied among jurisdictions in some places. ULT freezer capacity was already available in fixed infrastructure, such as in larger hospitals, scientific research facilities or specialized commercial sites. In other areas, an innovative approach that allowed for temporary capacity was needed to respond on a smaller scale.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has been working with the provinces, territories and indigenous partners to build the capacity for the cold chain. They have been obtaining ultra-low temperature and -20°C freezers in addition to hybrid units in various configurations. The freezers are then distributed where needed and the agency ensures that they are properly installed and inspected and are fully operational.
The federal government is also acquiring specialized equipment, containers and dry ice to transport vaccines in smaller quantities. The thermal shippers, in which the vaccines are shipped in their frozen state, can also be used for storage at the destination for up to a month. This allows greater flexibility to maintain the cold chain while reaching remote and isolated communities. This is in addition to providing supplementary equipment to support vaccination. By December 14, 2020, we had 14 locations across Canada ready to receive and administer vaccines. Within a month we were using over 10 times that on a weekly basis.
There are multiple delivery points, referred to as vaccine delivery sites, in each province and territory. The number of these sites being used at any given time fluctuates from week to week. Some sites are used for only one type of vaccine. Others can be used for both. The jurisdictions receiving the vaccine determine which sites are used and how, in order to support their individual vaccine plans.
The largest service providers can deliver vaccines deep into the provinces and territories by designating vaccine delivery sites in remote and isolated communities.