The new year brings a barrage of numbers, most of them bad. The virus: rising case counts. The vaccine: not enough doses, too slowly administered.
There is, however, one good number: Three out of five Canadians say they want to be vaccinated as soon as possible. That’s a big increase in just the past month, and it’s one of the reasons for optimism about Canada’s eventual victory over COVID-19.
Credit for changing attitudes may go to the devastating effects of the second wave, along with the fact that millions of people around the world have been inoculated, with major side effects extremely rare. As a result, more Canadians than ever are eager to get a jab. That’s no small thing, because willingness to take the vaccine is a necessary precondition for the vaccination campaign’s success.
Most people treat most vaccines as routine and uncontroversial. But there has been a certain amount of hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccines created using new technology, in record time. Their efficacy and safety are proven but their development happened so quickly that some public skepticism was to be expected.
But that skepticism is fading fast.
Last September, according to continuing Angus Reid Institute polling, a minority of Canadians – only 39 per cent – said they would take a shot as soon as it was available. Another 38 per cent said they’d rather wait. In December, the number of people who wanted the vaccine right away had climbed to 48 per cent. This month, it jumped to 60 per cent. The share of Canadians in the yes-eventually category has fallen to 23 per cent. (Canadians who say they don’t want the vaccine at all is down to 12 per cent; 5 per cent are uncertain.) In sum, more than four-fifths of the country is ready to roll up its sleeves.
That’s big news, and good news. But first, more bad news.
Like much of Canada’s pandemic response, the rollout of vaccines has been slow and sloppy, and at times confused.
The first jab here happened Dec. 14, earlier than most countries. Then Canada immediately fell behind. Vaccination sites in Ontario closed for the holidays. In early January, more than two-thirds of Canada’s doses, about 300,000, were sitting unused in freezers, and as of Jan. 4, Canada had given a shot to a grand total of 0.31 per cent of the population, less than a quarter of what the United States and Britain had managed, and a sliver of what world-leading Israel delivered. In Britain, there are seven mass vaccination sites, places such as stadiums and convention centres. The country is treating this like an emergency – because it is. Britain aims to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February. At that point, Canada will still be working towards two million.
Canada’s status as a vaccine laggard, however, is improving. About two-thirds of the doses delivered have now been injected and, as of Friday, 1.2 per cent of Canadians had received at least one shot. That’s ahead of countries such as Germany (1.1 per cent) and France (0.6), but still way behind Britain (5.4 per cent) and the U.S. (3.7). Israel has already vaccinated a quarter of its population.
Ontario has pledged to get a first dose to those most at risk – anyone living or working in a nursing home – by mid-February. Other provinces have similar targets. That will soon have a big impact.
Ottawa had outlined inventory in hand and incoming – 548,950 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were distributed to the provinces as of Jan. 7 and another 2.87 million doses had been scheduled to be rolled out by the end of February. But on Friday, Ottawa revealed delays for the Pfizer vaccine because of production issues at the company’s facility in Europe. There were supposed to be 1.9 million doses from Pfizer arriving between Jan. 18 and Feb. 28. The federal government now says Canada will be receiving only a quarter of its expected shipment next week, and over the next four weeks, the average number of Pfizer doses received will be about half what was promised.
News of the delay came several days after Ottawa announced the purchase of 20 million more doses from Pfizer, which are supposed to be delivered in spring and brings Canada’s total vaccine order to 80 million. Two other vaccines, developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, are currently being reviewed by Health Canada.
There’s still reason to hope that April will still mark the launch of mass vaccination. On Thursday, the military boss in charge of vaccine logistics, Major-General Dany Fortin, said 1 million doses a week will start landing at that point. There are a lot of details still to be sweated, from letting people know that it’s their time to be vaccinated to making sure that, even if the time period between first and second doses is stretched, second doses are given. And there is no way to guarantee against further delays in vaccine production. But Ottawa’s promise to vaccinate all willing Canadians by September appears realistic.
These are Canada’s darkest weeks of the pandemic. But vaccines are coming, and most Canadians are eager to take them. Consider that an inoculation against pessimism.
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