Public Services and Procurement Canada is working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to secure the goods and services needed to help Canada get through the pandemic.
Our primary goal at PSPC has been to meet the needs established by the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada as they worked—and continue to work—with the provinces and territories to support Canada's health care professionals on the front lines.
Early on, we focused on buying urgently needed PPE in what proved to be a hyper-competitive global market, with huge international demand for a finite supply of goods. My team accelerated procurement processes, and in some instances established completely new international supply chains to ensure that Canada had access to the most vital PPE from overseas as well as right here in Canada.
Indeed, we tapped into the ingenuity of Canadian companies. We put in place contracts with those who answered our call to action and stepped up to deliver what they could.
At the same time, our government made significant investments in domestic production of much-needed personal protective equipment, or PPE, helping several Canadian companies retool and expand their production lines.
To date, my department has now procured some 2.5 billion pieces of equipment, which we are continuing to receive, with a substantial amount of that equipment being made right here, at home.
We have also procured other vital supplies and services on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada, such as rapid tests and medical equipment.
As the members of this committee well know, our focus now is on vaccines—getting them into Canada and into the arms of eligible Canadians as soon as possible. We are also supporting the Public Health Agency of Canada and all provinces and territories with the supplies necessary, including the low-dead-volume syringes.
Moving to vaccines, Mr. Chair, our work from the outset has been to follow the advice, in our procurements, of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the COVID-19 vaccine task force. On their advice, we began by building a diversified portfolio of vaccine candidates as soon as they began to show promise. As soon as we received the advice of the vaccine task force, we began signing agreements in principle with potential suppliers. That was as early as July 2020.
Our objective was to place Canada in a solid position to take delivery of doses as soon as vaccines were deemed safe and effective—and that is precisely what we have done. We gained access to more than 400 million doses of potential vaccines from eight different manufacturers, resulting in one of the most diverse portfolios in the world.
This diverse portfolio is giving Canadians some security in what continues to be a volatile marketplace for vaccines, and it is thanks to this diverse portfolio that we are seeing inoculations happening across this country. We have four approved vaccines. We have received more than 12 million doses in this country since December. Millions more are arriving on our shores every week. We are working directly with our suppliers to keep them coming.
At the same time, we continue to negotiate for earlier deliveries from vaccine suppliers. Indeed, the Prime Minister and I just announced that we have secured the delivery of an additional eight million Pfizer vaccine doses. The first four million additional doses are scheduled to arrive in May. Two million doses a week are coming to Canada in May. That is double the amount of Pfizer doses that we had previously expected.
Indeed, in June we will also see more than two million doses arriving per week. Then, in July, there will be two million more doses, so Mr. Chair, Pfizer has really stepped up in order to ensure that we get vaccines into Canadians' arms as soon as possible.
All of this means that from April until the end of June, we are set to receive at least 24.2 million doses of Pfizer and, by the end of September, Canada will have received 48 million Pfizer doses. This is in addition to the other shipments of vaccines that are coming in from Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
This is tremendous news for Canadians. It means more Pfizer vaccine doses sooner, on top of the millions of other vaccines we already have coming.
I can also now provide an update on our anticipated deliveries of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine.
We expect an initial shipment of approximately 300,000 doses during the week of April 27, with more substantial deliveries coming in the latter part of this quarter and into the third quarter.
For AstraZeneca, Canada is scheduled to receive 4.1 million doses from various sources by the end of June, with further deliveries in the third quarter.
In total, prior to the end of June, Canada will receive between 48 million and 50 million doses of vaccines.
Mr. Chair, as we have said many times, by the end of September, we will have more than enough doses so that every eligible person in Canada will be able to be fully vaccinated.
Once again, this is good news for Canadians, but it doesn't mean our work is done. Our government continues to work with suppliers and our international partners to ensure the steady flow of vaccines into this country, and we are continuing to push for earlier delivery of vaccines from our suppliers.
Mr. Chair, this is the most important work that I have ever undertaken in my professional career. Like many of you around the table and Canadians across this country, I am worried about the third wave, and I am working—