Innomar Strategies won an important logistics contract to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in Canada

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was recently approved in Canada, and Innomar Strategies Inc., an InterTrade client, will be helping distribute the vaccines throughout the country.

FedEx Canada and Innomar Strategies Inc. have won a CAN$ 90.4 million (US$ 70.5 million) logistics contract from the Canadian government to distribute the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. Innomar, the leading patient support provider in the Canadian specialty pharmaceutical market, is the Canadian subsidiary of the U.S. drug distributor AmerisourceBergen.

Innomar has been an InterTrade client since 2013. The company’s integrated health care service network serves all of Canada to provide consistent care throughout the patient journey. Improving product access, increasing supply chain efficiency, and enhancing patient care are its top priorities. For Innomar, aiding in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine is a natural next step.

Canada approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 9. The agreement with Innomar was announced soon after. Canada purchased 20 million doses of the vaccine (enough to inoculate 10 million people) and is expected to receive 249,000 of those doses this month.

Innomar will be providing an end-to-end logistics solution in partnership with FedEx Express

To deliver the vaccine to every part of the country, Innomar is partnering with FedEx Express Canada to provide an end-to-end logistics solution. Innomar will protect product viability during shipment and make sure the vaccine arrives in each province and territory as quickly as possible. The company is set to provide third-party logistics and importation services.

Innomar will also use its facilities to store the COVID-19 vaccines. Each storage facility is GMP-compliant and designed specifically for pharmaceutical products, with the necessary temperature regulations in place to protect the vaccines.

FedEx will distribute the vaccines using its air and ground network in Canada. The company has 32 aircraft and 3,000 vehicles that can travel across the country and distribute the vaccine from coast to coast to coast. The Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Operations Centre is spearheading this effort.

Initial doses of the vaccine have already been administered

The Public Health Agency will spend the month of December working out logistics and determining how the vaccine will get from its point of manufacture to its point of use. The agency’s goal is to meet demand for vaccine distribution as quickly as possible, and to effectively immunize all Canadians against the COVID-19 virus.

Deliveries of approved COVID-19 vaccines have already taken place: the first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed on the evening of December 13. The first shots were administered in Ontario and Quebec the next day, arriving just in time, as cases have been rising across the country. About 30,000 more doses should arrive next week.

The first citizens to receive the vaccine will be frontline health workers, the elderly (including residents and staff in care facilities), and members of isolated Indigenous communities who don’t have immediate access to health care. Canada will become the third nation in the world to dispense the Pfizer vaccine. In Quebec, 50,000 people are expected to receive the vaccine free of charge by January 4, 2021.

We’re proud to work with Innomar Strategies Inc., a company that’s committed to making sure patients across the country have access to the medications they need.