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As Canada prepares for COVID-19 vaccines, ultra-low-temperature freezers are selling out fast

Aug 26, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Business, Paul Greco admits, has been booming.

In the month or so since Pfizer announced the world’s first successful , sales of the ultra-low-temperature freezers needed to store it have taken off.

“We basically sold as many in the two weeks after Pfizer’s announcement as we would all year. We’re sold out and waiting for our next shipment,” said Greco, president of Schomberg-based 360 Medical, the Canadian distributor of Haier Biomedical, a Chinese manufacturer of medical devices.

Normally, says Greco, his company would sell 40 or 45 over the course of a year. Those ULT freezers the Pfizer vaccine requires, which go as low as -90C, cost roughly $8,500 apiece for three cubic feet — about the size of a hotel fridge.

His next shipment, from Haier’s factory in Qingdao, China, is expected to arrive by the end of the month, with another 48 of the freezers.

Ordinarily, they’d already be here, waiting to be shipped out to buyers like hospitals or local public health units. But getting cargo shipped pretty much anywhere in the world right now isn’t easy. You can thank COVID for that, said Greco.

“Nobody was shipping anything from March through May. Now everyone’s trying to clear the backlog in every single industry at once. It usually takes 30 days to get things from the factory door to our warehouse. Now it’s taking 45 to 60,” said Greco, who estimates his company controls five to 10 per cent of the Canadian market.

Still, he doesn’t worry about his customers — or those of his competitors — getting their hands on freezers and fridges for storing vaccines.

“COVID is such a big priority for the federal government right now, that if they needed to, I could see them asking the Royal Canadian Air Force to send a plane over to pick stuff up if it came to that. I’m sure everyone will get the freezers and fridges they need,” said Greco.

Alex Esmon, a senior director at U.S.-based medical equipment maker Thermo Fisher, says Canadian customers have continued to snap up the company’s ULT freezers, as well as fridges for storing vaccines.

“Some institutions are preparing for every eventuality, so they’ll get a fridge, a minus-20 freezer and a ULT freezer too,” said Esmon. The Thermo Fisher ULT freezers range from a $6,000, one-cubic-foot mini-fridge the size of a vaccine-shipping container, to a standup fridge worth $14,000.

Thermo Fisher’s two factories, in Ohio and North Carolina, have been up and running all year, said Esmon.

“Because we’re essential, we’ve been able to stay open this whole time and continue producing for our customers, and still keeping our staff safe,” said Esmon.

Despite the high demand, Esmon doesn’t anticipate any issues supplying Canadian customers.

“We’re trying not to be one of the bottlenecks,” Esmon said.

Fraser Johnson, a supply chain and logistics professor at Western University’s Ivey School of business, agreed that medical supplies — especially anything related to COVID vaccines — are a priority for governments around the world right now. But other manufacturers are struggling to get their products shipped on time, particularly from factories in Southeast Asia to North America and Europe, Johnson said.

“It’s everything. Consumer products, car parts. It’s all coming over at once. The price of shipping containers has doubled since August,” said Johnson.

For large retailers or manufacturers, the situation is less tricky, because they often have long-term contracts with shipping companies. If they don’t, they can flex their buying power, Johnson said.

“For the Walmarts of the world, this isn’t as big of an issue, because they’ve got more relationships, and because of their scale, they have more leverage. But if you’re a small company and call up a shipping broker to say ‘I’ve got one shipping container that I need sent,’ you’re going to have a much harder time,” said Johnson.

For now, Pfizer itself is shipping its vaccine from points as close as possible to the sites where it will be used. During international flights, and until it reaches those “points of use,” it will be stored in what the company is calling thermal shippers, basically a box filled with dry ice.

From there, the vaccine can be stored in the shippers for up to 15 days by adding more dry ice; the vaccine can also be stored in ULT freezers for up to six months. For up to five days, the vaccine can be stored in refrigerators.

With files from Alex Boyd

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What we know about the organization behind demonstrations against COVID-19 restrictions

Aug 12, 2021 , , , , by shlf

For months in Toronto, The Line Canada has been organizing crowded demonstrations opposing the lockdown and public health directives aimed at curbing the spread of .

Most recently, on Tuesday, supporters of this organization were among those , where owner Adam Skelly was offering dine-in service, defying recent provincial rules that only allowed takeout and delivery.

The Line Canada created its website on April 30, 2020 to be a hub for multiple organizations across Canada that have been opposing the lockdown and restrictions that have been implemented to combat COVID-19.

The group calls itself a “civil liberties group” and says it is not an anti-mask organization. Footage and photos of the rallies however show the majority of the supporters not wearing masks and some wearing shirts or carrying signs that deride mask use, despite public health recommendations. The Star reached out to The Line Canada for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.

National director of The Line Canada, Lamont Daigle, also listed “no mandatory vaccinations” as a goal in a July video interview.

In Toronto, the group has been arranging self-described freedom demonstrations, which have been mostly held in Yonge-Dundas Square every Saturday, as well as at Queen’s Park. Many carry white flags with the group’s logo, a black circle with a red line through the middle.

The protests have been attended by hundreds, despite the province’s cap on outdoor gathering sizes (which has ranged from 10 to 100 at various times) to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.

In mid-October, a demonstration and was met with several replies on Twitter wondering if bylaw enforcement would be issuing fines for the size of the gathering and lack of physical distancing.

Elsewhere in Canada, The Line held protests in Sarnia, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton.

Protests have also been brought to small towns around Ontario on a weekly basis, including for example in St. Thomas, Ont. where 200 people arrived, at a time where there was only one active case of COVID-19, causing worry from the mayor that the gathering may lead to spread, Global News reported. In Aylmer, Ont., about 2,000 people from across the province flocked to the town of 7,500 for a demonstration.

The organization claims to have been banned from Facebook, but maintains Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Angelyn Francis is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering equity and inequality. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email:

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Bruce Arthur: Advice for Doug Ford: Sometimes the middle of the road is where you get run over

Aug 4, 2021 , , , , by shlf

was explaining how the system works. You need a system, in this economy. The question was whether two more regions, , would be returned to the public health restrictions of Stage 2. Friday, the premier said both were under consideration. Monday, neither one was moved.

So how did that work, exactly? What are the thresholds for this incredibly important public health measure, and who makes that call?

“I had a phone call with Mayor (Rob) Burton from Oakville, we have a great relationship,” said Ford Monday. “He said, ‘hey, I don’t think we’re at that point,’ and in Halton, this is unique, because we have none of the mayors agreeing, we have the regional chair not agreeing, we have our MPPs not agreeing, so I suggested to write a letter. Write a letter, let your local chief medical officer of health be aware of how you feel and how other mayors feel and how our MPPs feel. I spoke to one of my great MPPs, Jane McKenna, saying I encourage you to write a letter.”

Uh, what? So the premier encouraged a letter arguing against further restrictions in Halton from two Ontario Progressive Conservative MPPs, McKenna of Burlington and Parm Gill of Milton? That was his strategy?

As it turned out, Ford misspoke on Friday about at all, because, while the region’s numbers had been rising, their case numbers had also started to flatten. Nobody seemed to communicate to the premier that he had made a mistake. And the whole dumbshow unfolded, which gave ammunition to Ontario’s goofy herd immunity anti-lockdown crowd, who reacted to something, to be clear, that wasn’t actually being proposed at all.

A hasty caucus meeting was called Monday night to discuss it, and it’s all definitely how you want a government to be handling the epidemic response to the second wave of a pandemic. Good stuff.

It was revelatory, if repetitively so, because Durham wasn’t Halton. In the past three weeks, Durham’s cases per 100,000 people per week have gone from 16.3 to 26.8 to 37.3, and now sit at an even 40, per the Star’s invaluable Ed Tubb. Their contact tracing seems to be in great shape, and hospital capacity too, though waiting for your hospitals to fill up is one of the losing strategies of this pandemic. On cases alone, Durham is roughly where York was a week before it hit Stage 2, or Toronto two weeks before, or Ottawa and Peel three weeks before. Positivity rates had been increasing in both Durham and Halton.

“It very much looks reactive, and not proactive,” says Dr. Gerald Evans, the chair of the division of infectious diseases at Queen’s University, and a volunteer member of the province’s science table. “If you look around the world, you can very nicely see groups where, that was the time you should have started it, not the time they did do it. So some of us are saying, be proactive, do something, don’t wait!”

The province doesn’t get ahead of the virus, ever. It’s clear the bar for the province actually imposing restrictions is quite high. How high? They won’t tell us, which means the anti- and pro-lockdown factions are both left to guess. When Dr. Eileen de Villa and the Toronto Board of Health asked Ford to place Toronto into a modified Stage 2 on Oct. 2, it took a solid week — not just of waiting, but of acrimony and negotiation — before the province acceded, and put Ottawa and Peel in as well. They waited until Toronto was at 69.9 cases per 100,000 residents per week, and 3.1 per cent positivity. Two weeks later the city’s test positivity is 4.4. Which is a bad number.

“Three per cent is kind of interesting, right around 3 or 4 per cent,” says Dr. Evans. “If you look around the planet, right around 3 or 4 per cent test positivity rates in many larger cities and jurisdictions, that’s the inflection point. After that point it begins to rise exponentially.”

That number will wrestle with restrictions now, and it all should have happened sooner. Ottawa has seen a hopeful dip in reported cases; Peel, Toronto and York, unfortunately, have not. And other jurisdictions may yet meet the same problems, because listen to the premier. When he lists who he calls before making these decisions, Ford says he calls local politicians first, then local businesses.

“I always say I gotta listen to the docs, I always will, and the science, but in saying that, I have to listen to the small business owners,” said Ford.

Never mind that public health officials and infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists will tell you that you control the virus first, and that is the best way to preserve the economy. Never mind that this pandemic is a marshmallow test, and the strongest measures to slow spread are the early aggressive ones. Ford compromises, you see. There is a balance.

“Can I justify if a region is hitting super-high numbers, be it Peel or Toronto?” said Ford. “No, I can’t justify. Can I fight all day long for Halton and other regions and cheering them on and really pushing back at the health table? I do it all the time. I do it all the time. But we have to have a balance there.

“We have caucus members, cabinet members on both sides. We have some cabinet and caucus members who think, don’t worry, everything’s fine. We have other ones that may feel, OK, shut everything down. But we’re going right down the middle of the road. We have to have a happy balance.”

Ford does sometimes listen to certain scientific advice. He doesn’t say how or why, or make their advice public, but he does.

Still, it’s clearer and clearer that this province doesn’t understand or believe in truly preventative public health measures, much less powerful enough epidemic response, to preserve the economy. And the result is we have case counts and hospitalizations and long-term care outbreaks rising in a data-poor system with bad public health communication and a gaffe-prone premier, and we’ll see where that goes. Everyone wants to save the economy; the smart people say, deal with your public health first. Because sometimes the middle of the road is where you get run over.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: