OTTAWA – Canadian officials are struggling to make up for lost ground in their quest to vaccinate vulnerable people against Covid-19, after an initial implementation that many public health officials are criticizing as slow and disorganized.
While Canada was quick to order vaccines and approved the use of the injection developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE in early December – two days before the US authorized it – the country fell behind in several of its developed country peers in the administration vaccines.
Just over 0.5% of the neighboring population in the northern United States was vaccinated by Wednesday. In comparison, the United States vaccinated 1.6% of its population to date, and Israel vaccinated more than 18%, according to Our World in Data, a nonprofit research project at the University of Oxford. The UK vaccinated about 1.9% of its population by January 3, the latest date for which vaccination numbers were available.
Public health experts say Canadian authorities have been struggling to move doses of the vaccine quickly from industrial freezers, where they need to be stored, to long-term care facilities, where elderly residents are among the first designated vaccines. The rollout was complicated by a decentralized health system administered by individual provinces and territories and Ontario’s decision to stop vaccination in the country’s most populous province for two days during the holidays.
The head of the provincial government’s vaccine task force, retired general Rick Hillier, said later that the break was a wrong decision, made under the expectation that long-stay homes would have fewer staff available to receive doses of the vaccine. during the holidays.