Ottawa has awarded international accounting firm Deloitte a $16-million contract to build a national computer system to manage and track Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Deloitte’s vaccine management system "will help manage vaccine rollout, administration and reporting on a go-forward basis, as the volume of deliveries increases," according to Public Services and Procurement Canada.
The federal government has not said when it expects Deloitte to have the new system up and running even though COVID-19 vaccines are already being distributed across the country.
Federal officials last month defended the existing computer systems used to track and manage vaccine distribution across Canada, specifically those used for flu inoculations each year.
Officials have said the new system developed by Deloitte will add to their effectiveness, including connecting the systems used by different provinces.
But critics have noted that the existing systems for tracking vaccinations across provinces are extremely diverse and are largely used to track inoculations in children.
Ottawa says 548,000 doses had been distributed to the provinces and territories to date. Individual provinces are responsible for getting the vaccines into Canadians' arms and reporting on those inoculations.
Ottawa has said that all Canadians who want vaccinations against COVID-19 will be able to get them by September of this year, but progress to date has been slower than expected and there has been talk about finding ways to immunize more people faster.
Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said last week that she had asked the National Advisory Committee on Immunization to study whether it would be warranted to delay the second doses of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine in a bid to get first doses to more people faster.
