The chair of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force says the University Health Network in Toronto will not be receiving more vaccines in the next few days as it's expected to temporarily run out of doses on Friday.

General Rick Hillier spoke to CP24 Friday morning and said the province is in need of more doses as vaccination sites ramp up efforts to administer the shots to as many people as possible.

He acknowledged that the province’s vaccine rollout plan had a slow start but said it is now picking up speed.

However, the 19 vaccination sites across the province are facing supply shortages as shipments of the vaccine are not coming in fast enough from the federal government, Hillier said.

“Now we're at a capacity, even with the few sites that we have running...we’re already at a capacity to put [shots] to far more people than we have vaccines coming in,” he said.

Hillier's remarks echo comments he made earlier this week where he disputed claims that vaccines are sitting in freezers across the province.

Toronto’s University Health Network is one of those sites facing limited supply as it’s expected to run out of doses by the end of today.

“We’re out of vaccine @UHN on Friday and have 3000 people booked per day Sat, Sun, Monday. Urgently need vaccine,” UHN President and CEO Dr. Kevin Smith tweeted Thursday night.

Hillier's remarks echo comments he made earlier this week where he disputed claims that vaccines are sitting in freezers across the province.

Toronto’s University Health Network is one of those sites facing limited supply as it’s expected to run out of doses by the end of today.

“We’re out of vaccine @UHN on Friday and have 3000 people booked per day Sat, Sun, Monday. Urgently need vaccine,” UHN President and CEO Dr. Kevin Smith tweeted Thursday night.

Hillier said UHN will not receive more doses of the vaccine ‘today or tomorrow’ unless vaccines are reallocated from other sites.

“We're looking around to see if we can reallocate any more from any other place, but those other vaccine sites are equally efficient. They're really focused on getting those vaccines into long-term care homes and essential workers and health-care workers and residents who are trapped there, so to speak,” he said.

Hillier said UHN and other sites will have to back up on their efforts until more shots become available.

“We'll slow that capacity down until the next vaccine allocation arrives, that’s sometime next week, we're not sure of exactly which day yet. And then we'll pick it up again, do them as quickly as possible, and we're going to be stopping-starting for a few weeks because the vaccine allocations are still very small,” he said.

Feds says they are working closely with provinces

Responding to questions about vaccine shortages Friday, federal officials said they are working closely with the provinces, but the amount of doses available at the moment should not come as a surprise.

“We are all pushing in the same direction,” Federal Procurement Minister Anita Anand said.

She said while the progress by the provinces to ramp up their distribution efforts are “impressive” the federal government has been clear with them about the schedule for when they can expect more vaccine doses to arrive.

“We have been clear that we will be ramping up with the doses that we are delivering to the provinces. In fact, we will be doubling the vaccine deliveries from January to February alone,” Anand said. “This is information that the province does have and that they can use for their planning purposes.”

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who heads the federal vaccine effort, added that “our numbers are their numbers. They have visibility on what's coming in January and in February, and can plan accordingly.”

He said federal officials have been providing “as much clarity, as much visibility as possible on the doses available as we firm up those numbers with the manufacturers” and added that conversations are ongoing with the provinces.

“It's a collective effort, and we're very much in daily conversations with the provinces and territories. The ramp-up can be difficult, because there's a desire to immunize at scale. The vaccines are coming. We've said all along, 6 million doses between when we started in December and March, and we're providing as much clarity as possible, so that planners can plan as effectively as possible and immunize as rapidly as possible.”

Asked whether Canada refused to pay a price that would have secured doses more quickly, Anand said the federal government “put everything on the table with the vaccine companies” during negotiations, including cost.

“In my conversations with these companies every day, that point is clear that Canada is the jurisdiction that they are serving and servicing, and we will continue to work with those suppliers to accelerate deliveries earlier and earlier in 2021,” Anand said. “That is the work that I am doing, and the work that my department is doing every single day.”

Shortage a sign efforts are progressing; provincial task force member

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Issac Bogoch said he sees the supply shortage as a "good problem to have."

"Obviously we want more vaccines, we don't want to cancel anybody getting a vaccine, but this tells me that the vaccines are being deployed," Bogoch, who is a member of the province's 10-person COVID-19 vaccine task force, told CP24 on Friday.

"We've been talking for probably about a week and a half saying you have to do this faster, you have to ramp up [vaccinations], you have to scale up. So, if you're running out, that's a good place to be in my books," he added.

Over the Christmas holidays, the government came under fire for pausing inoculations despite record-high COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

Hillier acknowledged that the government made a mistake and will not take any more days off from administering the shots.

Earlier this week, the provincial government announced its goal of inoculating all long-term care home residents and staff by Jan. 21 in the hardest hit areas of the province: Toronto, Peel Region, York Region and Windsor-Essex.

While the pace of inoculations is increasing, Hillier said he is not satisfied with the status of the rollout plan.

“I would have liked to move much faster. I'd like to have more vaccines to allow us to go more quickly around the rest of the province, not just the four regions that we're focusing right now with the long-term care homes and retirement homes.”

As of 11:45 a.m. on Thursday, more than 72,600 doses of the vaccine have been administered in the province, according to government data. To date, 2,173 people have received the required two doses of the vaccine for full immunization.

The province began administering its first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 14 to health-care workers at UHN and The Ottawa Hospital, as part of a pilot project.

To date, the province has received roughly 95,000 doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and are expecting 50,000 more doses this week, followed by 80,000 doses every week for the rest of January.

Meanwhile, 53,000 doses of Moderna’s vaccine were transferred to the province during the week of Dec. 28 and another 56,000 were expected to arrive this week.

So far, only Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines have been approved by Health Canada but Hillier said he’s asking for “a little push” on approving AstaZeneca’s vaccine as well.

“Is Health Canada going to approve that or not? Please do. And if you’re not going to approve it, tell us. And if you then approve it… get AstraZeneca to us also so we can get more people protected from that horrible, terrible tragedy called COVID,” he said.