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 doctors' clinics and nurse practitioners' 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."

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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." 

Quality concerns

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.

According to Berg, this was a single event that the company brought to the attention of Alberta Health.

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"We then worked with Alberta Health to recall the product impacted — there was no safety impact to the public. We also credited Alberta Health the costs associated with the storage of this product."

He said the company was never notified of safety or quality concerns during its three-year term.

"We continued to support vaccine distribution in Alberta five months after this incident occurred."

Hundreds of clinics impacted

The government's procurement document said it is seeking a company to ship vaccines to between 500 and 600 community medical clinics and that a distributor would be expected to ship about 200,000 doses per year, including to rural and remote areas.

NDP health critic Sarah Hoffman said people's lives depend on being able to access publicly funded vaccines.

"The patients who regularly rely on their family doctor [for vaccines] are often elderly, are infirm, have a hard time navigating the city and building new relationships, and their doctor is their anchor," she said.

Hoffman, a former health minister herself, called the government's handling of the distribution problem "incompetent."

"Letting one contract lapse before you have a contract for how you're going to handle it in the future is irresponsible," she said.

"They floundered. They showed disrespect to doctors. And patients are the ones who are paying the price."

The distribution problem reaches beyond the fall immunization program. Shipments of other publicly funded vaccines, including the shot that protects against whooping cough, also stopped in the spring, leaving family doctors without access.

Meanwhile, Talbot, a former chief medical officer of health, said he's worried about the impact the delay could have on the health of vulnerable Albertans and hospitals, which are already under stress.

"These are the highest priority people that you want to reach … if your point is not just to reduce the illness and suffering in that group, but to decrease pressure on the health-care [system] more broadly, including emergency departments, hospitals and ICUs," he said.