NDP accuses province of 'incompetence' as health officials aim to fill vaccine distribution gap

As the Alberta government comes under fire for failing to ship publicly funded vaccines to community medical clinics for the start of the fall immunization campaign, the health minister insists she's looking into the delay and working on a backup plan. 

As CBC News reported last week, shipments of publicly funded vaccines to doctor's clinics and nurse practitioner's offices were halted in April when a distribution contract expired. 

With no replacement distributor found, those health-care providers were warned they would not receive COVID-19 or flu vaccines for the Oct. 15 start of the autumn immunization program.

A key step in the procurement process — a request for an expression of interest for vaccine distribution to these clinics — was posted Aug. 21, 2024, roughly four months after the distribution contract expired.

"What the timelines prove is that the government has utterly failed in understanding the importance of prevention," said Dr. James Talbot, former chief medical officer of health for Alberta and adjunct professor at the University of Alberta.

"If they did value prevention, they would have had these things in place long ago."  

When asked about the apparent delay, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange acknowledged there are questions.

"That is something that I am looking into as well," she said during a press conference Wednesday.

"But in the meantime, I want to make sure that people have access to immunizations that want immunizations. So we're looking to see how we can get those clinics the product they need to distribute."

According to LaGrange, Albertans will still have access to vaccines at 2,000 other locations around the province.

"Those [community medical clinics] represent roughly five per cent of the overall immunizations that we provide across the province. And it is very important. And so we are working actively to make sure that they do have product via a different route." 

She also told reporters the contract was not renewed because of "quality and safety issues" with the previous distributor.

Accuristix, the company involved, said it managed the storage and distribution of approximately 800,000 vaccine doses over a three-year period and that most of the COVID-19 vaccines required ultra-cold temperature control.

"We were aware that approximately one per cent of these vaccines experienced a temperature excursion, which could impact efficacy," company president Dean Berg said in a email.