COVID-19, five years later: 2 Quebec companies preparing for next pandemic

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, two Quebec companies work to ensure the province is more prepared heading forward.

Five years ago this week, Quebec marked its first case of the coronavirus.

Two factories began reshaping the province’s resilience to the virus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in hopes that Quebec would be better prepared in the future.

• READ MORE: Medical equipment and vaccines: Is Quebec better prepared to face a pandemic? (In French)

In 2025, Medicom in Saint-Laurent churns out nearly 1.3 million masks every day.

In 2021, the factory struck a massive deal with the Quebec government to provide it with personal protective equipment (PPE) for the next 10 years.

Its CEO told CTV News that Canada was at the mercy of other countries for essential equipment and it needs to be able to rely on local production ahead of the next potential health crisis.

“Ninety-five per cent of production capacity was coming from China,” said Guillaume Laverdure. “When China decided to shut down their borders in January 2020, Quebec could not access face masks to protect its population.”

Medicom was tapped by the provincial and federal governments to fix that problem.

The company opened new plants in the province to produce N95 and surgical masks, as well as filtering material, which until recently was mostly imported from Europe.

“We even manufacture the raw material locally that goes into the face masks. We have safety stock, and we have the capacity to ramp up,” said Laverdure.

While that puts the province in a better position, he says that in the long-term, Quebec needs to make more gowns and gloves.

Plus, local production is all the more important with the threat of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs looming.

Fixing gaps in the supply chain

During the pandemic, Canada scrambled to secure vaccines from U.S. based companies like Pfizer and Moderna.

Stressed supply chains delayed their long-awaited arrival.

A new Moderna factory in Laval is trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

If another health crisis hits, 100 million doses of mRNA vaccines can be made at the factory yearly, says the general manager, Stefan Raos.

“Producing vaccines in times of pandemics, but even on a seasonal basis, is critically important, and it strengthens our Canadian ability to respond to any health or sanitary threats,” he said.

The head of the manufacturing site, Roger-Ketcha Ngassam, said it’s ready to adapt and produce different kinds of vaccines, if necessary.

“We do have a pipeline of approximately 40 different products being developed at the moment,” he said. “We could think about rare disease, we could think about cancer, we could of course talk about respiratory vaccines.”

Moderna Laval is waiting on approval from the federal government to start supplying vaccines across the country.

But not all local vaccine projects have gone as planned.

Canada gave Montreal’s Biologics Manufacturing Centre close to $130 million dollars to make a COVID-19 vaccine called Nuvaxovid. But as of last fall, it appears not a single vial had been produced.

The company did not reply to CTV News’ questions about whether that has changed.

Still, both Moderna Laval and Medicom say the province is better prepared if another pandemic comes because of some hard-learned lessons.