Canada is behind in vaccinating their citizens while the US has already vaccinated more people in one day than Canada has ever had and wonder why it’s happening.
As we all know, Canada was criticized at the end of 2020 for buying multiple supplies they needed to cover its 37.59 million population and signed deals with seven vaccine suppliers – Moderna, Pfizer, and with pending companies – AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson – for a total of over 400 million doses, which we learned later on that no priority deliveries were to be made.
Some of the reasons behind the delays are because of the countries decisions on investing in vaccines from European factories, feared that the US, under former president Donald Trump orders at the time, would issue export bans that denies and stops in selling product to Canada.
But in December, Mr Trump issued an executive order to give Americans “first priority” for vaccines to be produced in the US as this smart move by Trump gave the US pharmacies access to supply vaccines to about 40,000 drugstores in the coming months.
Canada is nowhere near the pharmacy stage of its vaccine rollouts, but is expected to happen once the country has enough supplies to distribute.
With European factories already struggling with high supply demands, Canada and its vaccine suppliers have said that the expected agreements will be honored despite the pressure received from the US.
Early last year, Canada also signed an agreement with Chinese vaccine-maker CanSino for a vaccine trial and agreed to bring its vaccine candidate to Canada for testing, but that deal fell apart.
With frustrations on the rise, citizens have accused the federal government of failing to meet agreements with Pfizer and Moderna to secure a contract because it was focused on that failed deal Canada made with other countries while lacking domestic production capacity for vaccines with only being able to vaccinate 2.65% of the population.
Essential workers like Gadir Hamed and Malina Kidane feel that the country is far too developed to be facing these types of problems.
“Once again it feels like we’re one step behind everyone else. We as a well-developed country have the resources to have organized this better but we were irresponsible.” Said Hamid “It’s absolutely not the responsibility of the lesser developed countries to bear the burden of our mistakes.
“It’s super frustrating and kind of surprising coming from a country that is supposedly “developed” with the sense of urgency for ending this pandemic you would think the vaccine rollout would be much more organized” Said Kidane who is an essential nurse who has already been vaccinated. “I’m lucky to have gotten the vaccine but I know there are so many more healthcare and frontline workers who have yet to receive it which is very unfair considering they are risking their lives everyday just like me.”
While Jenna Cobb who has been on lock-down since the pandemic started feels that the federal government may be doing this on purpose.
“I think they’re doing to increase the demand because a lot of people don’t want to take it or are skeptical about it…but by withholding it, it shows that there’s a high demand for it so it tricks people into wanting to take it. So essentially, they’re withholding it on purpose.”
Canada, has only rolled out close to 1.4 million doses since the middle of December, covering about 2.65% of its population with at least one dose per person and almost 12% of people over 80 and just over 55% of priority healthcare workers have received at least one vaccine.
Canada also announced early in February that it signed its first deal to allow a foreign coronavirus vaccine, developed by Novavax, to be manufactured locally in Montreal but that vaccine is still in phase three trials and the Montreal production facility remains under construction.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that vaccine delivery is set to rapidly increase, with provinces preparing to roll out almost a million and a half doses over the next three weeks as Canada is expecting six million doses by the end of March, a deadline Mr Trudeau has said suppliers expect to meet.
Be the first to comment