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But their patience, if not their sense of humor, is running out. They say they still have no idea when they’ll get that important “bullet in the arm” again and a chance to resume normal life.
“On the one hand you’re trying to be reasonable, and on the other hand you’re yelling your head and saying … you know, ‘what’s wrong here, why don’t we do something else , ‘You know? ”Carol said as her husband David nodded in agreement from their home in Stouffville, Ont., just outside of Toronto.
The Canadian government believed it could pay to play in the global race to vaccinate its way to normal life. But while its vaccine supply slowed to a net in February, Canada remains on the sidelines of this race despite purchasing more doses of vaccine per capita than, likely, any other country on Earth.
Canada apparently started purchasing vaccines early in April of last year, although the government says it has been unable to convince any company to produce them on Canadian soil. And ultimately, it was the timeline – the fact that manufacturers did not prioritize Canada for doses this winter – that sealed the fate of millions of Canadians still waiting to be vaccinated.
“We just haven’t heard anything about what the future has in store other than the fact that we might see supplies entering the country in April, and that’s a very frustrating thing for me,” said David on CNN.
To date, Canadian authorities say they have administered nearly 1.2 million doses, vaccinating less than 3% of its population – a fraction of the doses given in the United States and the United Kingdom – and that it is now in lag behind most European countries. good.
In comparison, the United States has vaccinated at least 10% of its population and the United Kingdom almost 20%. Canadians have strong ties to people in both countries, and many have started hearing from friends and family who have been vaccinated or have an appointment to get one.
As a retired nurse, Carol is only too well aware that new, highly transmissible variants are harassing older people and the need for vaccines is growing.
“It’s such a huge thing that this pandemic and no one has ever had to do it before, and it’s just, just troubleshooting all the time, and I realize it from a logical standpoint,” he said. Carol said. “But there’s an emotional part and it’s hard – it’s really hard, because you question yourself, you question other people in power and you say, ‘Well, how is it do they do it better there? and we don’t do better here and why don’t we get the vaccine? ”
Carol says that although they are in relatively good health, it is getting harder and harder to accept that there is no specific timeline for when they will receive their vaccine.
Where are Canada’s vaccines?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps his promise: every Canadian who wants a vaccine will get one by September.
To keep this promise, Canada claims to have purchased nearly 400 million doses from seven vaccine manufacturers. To date, only Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been authorized in Canada.
Although Canada claims to have spent nearly a billion dollars to purchase these vaccines, the country has not been at the forefront of receiving these vaccines.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have significantly slowed deliveries to Canada after a combination of manufacturing delays and demands from Europe, where Canada buys its doses, to restrict exports of vaccines subject to European approval.
Canada did not attempt to procure vaccine doses from the United States after the Trump administration said it would not allow the export of any vaccine.
“The week after week turbulence that we are seeing is concerning and we are watching it closely and staying there,” Trudeau said last week at a press conference. “But let me reassure people that we are still on track as promised to get those six million doses by the end of March, because that’s what the CEO of the vaccine keeps telling me.” , and I am happy to reassure Canadians on this matter.
For Canada, vaccines may be plentiful in the spring, but months behind schedule to help vulnerable people who are still immune and fearful of new variants of the virus.
“Ultimately, every delay is lives lost, and that’s the tragedy of it all,” said Jillian Kohler, professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and an advisor to the University of Toronto. World Health Organization. “It’s not something where we can just sit back and say, ‘Oh, we haven’t thought about that’ or ‘we didn’t know vaccine manufacturing is complex and delays happen,’ but the reality is when we slow down (on vaccines) we have lives that are needlessly lost and that is unacceptable. “
With the few vaccines that have been delivered, Canada has prioritized long-term care centers, places where Covid-19 has wreaked deadly havoc.
The government has also made an impressive effort to immunize remote and indigenous communities where health services are lacking. The government said this week that in some northern outposts, more than 90% of the adult population had already been vaccinated.
It can actually save lives, but in the short term it will not change the lives of most Canadians.
Professor Kohler says instead of ‘hoarding’ vaccines, the Canadian government should have realized months ago that without any domestic manufacturing capacity, it would be at the mercy of manufacturers and fierce global competition. for the doses.
“Having vaccine sovereignty is essential. Relying on exports for critical health needs frankly doesn’t make sense when you look at trends in nationalism,” she said.
Canada has signed an agreement in principle with the American vaccine company Novavax to produce millions of doses of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate at a facility in Montreal. But that production probably won’t start until the end of this year at the earliest.
The Greens say they read all the headlines and understand the intricacies, but they will miss their granddaughter’s 8th birthday this month, and they say ‘it hurts’.
“Yeah, yeah absolutely, because I just feel like we’re really behind the hay trailer so to speak you know?” Carol said, adding that just like the Christmas holidays, they would be celebrating the birthday virtually.
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