Thank you, Mr. Minister.
Mr. Chair, hon. members, thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee today. It is my honour to be here to talk about what Health Canada has been doing to keep Canadian safe and healthy, as we fight COVID‑19 and the omicron variant.
As part of the health portfolio, Health Canada has played a key role in Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As new vaccines and treatments are developed, they must come to Health Canada for review and authorization before they can be used in Canada.
Health Canada's regulatory branch ensures that drugs and treatments, including vaccines, meet Canada's strict standards for safety, efficacy and quality. Given the urgency of the pandemic, measures were put in place to safely expedite this authorization process. This included an interim order, introduced in September 2020, allowing Health Canada to accept rolling submissions for drugs, including vaccines, related to COVID-19. This expedited process helped make COVID-19 vaccines available to Canadians as soon as possible in late 2020.
When the interim order expired the following year, amendments were introduced to the food and drug regulations to give permanent legal status to drugs and vaccines authorized under the order and to maintain regulatory flexibilities introduced through the interim order.
I want to assure you that my department continues to review safety and efficacy data for all authorized drugs and vaccines on an ongoing basis. That includes regular reporting on side effects.
As the pandemic continues, it is vital that we have timely access to life-saving vaccines and leading-edge treatments for COVID-19, particularly in light of the highly transmissible omicron variant.
While vaccination continues to be the best way to protect ourselves from serious illness, hospitalization and death, treatments that reduce the severity of infections are an important tool in the fight against this disease.
Health Canada has authorized several treatments for COVID‑19, including monoclonal antibody treatments.
Yesterday, Health Canada authorized Pfizer's Paxlovid, an antiviral treatment for adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are at high risk of progressing to serious disease. Other submissions are being reviewed on a priority basis, including Merck's antiviral treatment molnupiravir.
Paxlovid and molnupiravir are significant, because all existing COVID-19 treatments require intravenous administration or injection in a hospital or clinical setting. These new antivirals are in pill form. They are taken orally. This represents an important step forward in ensuring timely access to COVID-19 treatments. As such, the Government of Canada has signed an agreement with Pfizer to procure an initial quantity of one million treatment courses of Paxlovid, and with Merck for 500,000 treatment courses of molnupiravir.
Now that Paxlovid has been authorized, the Public Health Agency of Canada will work in close collaboration with the provinces and territories to facilitate its distribution and provide support on its use.
Throughout the pandemic, the Government of Canada has been working closely with provincial and territorial governments to help them adapt to the challenges of delivering health care during this crisis.
Whether coordinating PPE, providing surge support, or collaborating with provinces and territories on vaccine rollout, we at the federal level have been doing everything we can to make sure that our provincial and territorial partners have the support they need. This includes supporting surge capacity, such as contact tracing, testing assistance, testing equipment, PPE and medical equipment, laboratory services, outbreak management, voluntary safe isolation sites, public health response teams and health human resources.
After two years of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, including the recent omicron surge—