Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee. I'm pleased to provide the committee with an update on the progress we've made so far and our plans for moving forward to provide all Canadians with vaccines by the fall.
So far, the national operations centre here at the agency has distributed nearly two and a half million doses of both approved vaccines—Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna—with approximately three and a half million coming next month to round out our six million announced commitment from both manufacturers.
Since last December, we have been working on a plan that will allow us to deliver authorized vaccines safely, efficiently and as quickly as possible to provinces and territories. We deliberately implemented a phased approach so we could establish our capacity to distribute vaccines and support the provinces and territories to administer the vaccines. We completed a series of tabletop exercises and various discussions and rehearsals with the provinces and territories to ensure that all critical capability gaps were filled, risks were identified and mitigated, that the plan was resilient and contingencies were in place to secure the vaccine supply chain. That continues today.
As part of our soft launch approach last December, we started with early deliveries of authorized vaccines to 14 designated points of use on the 14th of December across Canada. As we moved forward, we expanded the number of distribution sites. Last week alone, 107 vaccination sites were used for Pfizer and 83 for Moderna.
Also, I personally conducted multiple bilateral meetings with counterparts from provincial and territorial vaccine rollout leads as well as federal stakeholders to ensure that we're all on the same page. We continue to have those moving forward.
Over the last two months, Canada was significantly affected by COVID-19 vaccine shortages and delays as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna reduced production rates at their respective European facilities. This created a temporary delay for deliveries to Canada, but the improvements in manufacturing are now allowing for greater productivity. We are now coming out of this trough.
From the beginning, we have been open with our partners and stakeholders about fluctuations in supply and the need for contingency plans.
I want to emphasize that we are expecting 444,000 doses each week in March from Pfizer-BioNTech and that Moderna will send the full 2 million missing doses. We are on a very good track from our perspective.
From April onwards, we expect a sharp increase in the availability of licensed vaccines against COVID-19. As we announced this morning, we will receive two new vaccines from AstraZeneca, and these quantities will be added to the totals for these two productions.
More than 23 million doses are therefore expected to arrive between April and June. This includes the advance delivery of an additional 2.8 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, which was planned for this summer, but will now occur in the spring.
The National Operations Centre at the Public Health Agency of Canada continues to lead the planning effort to ensure that the provinces and territories keep pace with the increased deliveries of licensed vaccines. In addition, the National Operations Centre continues to ship different types of freezers to ensure ultra-cold and cold chain storage for different products, further building capacity in the provinces and territories.
Our collective efforts over the past months and weeks, the initial testing of our distribution and logistics systems, and the launch of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have all served to set the stage for rapid scale-up in anticipation of the increased availability of vaccines in the coming weeks and months. The same approach will be taken in the coming weeks for the additional vaccines, in close collaboration with the provinces and territories.
Coordination and collaboration with our federal, provincial and territorial partners is key to the success of this operation. We regularly give them updates or inform them of changes to the distribution plan and ensure that we give them as much visibility as possible on future quantities as soon as we can.
Mr. Chair, in conclusion, our work to enable our provincial and territorial counterparts continues to be done proactively and transparently. This is a co-operative effort that touches on everything from vaccine availability to enabling equipment, to considerations by health care practitioners. We're are in close coordination, and we will continue to be so over the next several months. Every step of the way, to ensure that vaccines continue to be delivered efficiently and safely across regions in Canada, we've been working collaboratively with all stakeholders, and we'll certainly endeavour to do so moving forward.
With that, subject to your questions, this concludes my introductory remarks.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.