In comparison with other countries across the globe, Canada’s roll-out of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna coronavirus vaccine has proved significantly more challenged, and much slower when compared with vaccine roll-outs in many other countries.
Oxford University’s online tool Our World in Data, from which the information in the graphic at the top of today’s column was obtained, has Canada listed far below other countries like Israel and Bahrain, when measuring vaccines administered per 100 people …
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Canada at 0.14
- United States at 0.59
- United Kingdom at 1.18
- Bahrain at 3.23
- Israel at 4.37
In Canada, the slow pace is being blamed on limited supply, poorly planned vaccination programmes in some provinces, and the technical deep-cold storage required for the Pfizer vaccine.
Approximately 242,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 168,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine, for a total of just over 410,000 overall vaccines had arrived in Canada by early this week.
In the United States, President-elect Joe Biden has promised Americans that by the end of his first 100 days in office, or near the end of April, more than one hundred million COVID-19 immunizations across the U.S. will have been administered. To meet that goal, which works out at a million immunizations a day, Biden acknowledged that his administration would need to move several times faster than Trump administration roll-out, and vowed to invoke the Defense Production Act to accelerate vaccine production and launch an education campaign to tackle vaccine hesitancy.
In other words, before the end of April 2021, one-third of all Americans over the age of 18 will have been immunized against COVID-19. Biden has promised that by June 30, every American who wants a vaccine will have received a coronavirus immunization, to protect them and their families.
Meanwhile, in British Columbia, Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has stated that B.C. plans on immunizing 400,000 people against COVID-19 by late March of 2021, with priority given to residents and staff of long-term care homes and health-care workers — that would be fewer than 10% of British Columbians over the age of 18 will be vaccinated by March 31st.
Federally, in a sombre pre-Christmas Day message, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the populace roughly 375,000 Canadians, or one per cent of the Canadian population, should be vaccinated with the two-dose Pfizer shot by January 30th, with all Canadians who wish to be immunized due to be vaccinated by September 30, 2021 — three long months behind the U.S.
Meanwhile, for all the bluster among federal political leaders about not wanting an election any time soon, the political truth is as cold as the winter’s wind: the potential for a spring 2021 Canadian election will, in all likelihood, become a reality, as Canadians once again head to the polls.
And what will emerge as the key issue in the upcoming 2021 federal election? Could it be the painfully slow, behind every other developed country in the world, “botched” roll-out of the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine to Canadians anxious to return to some sort of normalcy, sooner rather than later, in 2021 — with the possibility that Canadians might experience an almost usual summer season full of music festivals, Hollywood blockbusters, travel across our great nation sans the necessity of having to wear a mask, a Canada that will allow us to once again congregate with our family, our friends, our neighbours and colleagues in safety and good cheer.
In addition to the already approved Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna novel coronavirus vaccines, in the coming month Health Canada is expected to approve the following COVID-19 vaccines …
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Oxford-AstraZeneca: 20 million doses;
- Johnson & Johnson: up to 38 million doses;
- Novavax: up to 76 million doses; with …
- Medicago (up to 76 million doses), and Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (up to 72 million doses) also in the pipeline.
If Canada’s roll-out of the life-saving novel coronavirus vaccines is, indeed, slow, you can reasonably predict that Canadians will be not just disconsolate but might find themselves more raucously up in arms, and perhaps even bloody pissed that Canada has proved so slow off the mark.
If there’s no crying in baseball, there ain’t no winning in politics, either.
