According to a group compiling data on the coronavirus, Canada is lagging even if America is vaccinating its citizens – at an ice-cold rate of 0.31 COVID-19 vaccines per 100 people.
No Canadian province has administered more than 50 percent of the doses received, even though the country was among the first to allow the withdrawals, 680 News reported Tuesday.
Canada’s online vaccination tracker shows that as of Monday evening, only 144,807 doses were administered out of the 420,450 we received. The country has about 37.6 million inhabitants.
The COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group found that the country was dispensing vaccines at an alarmingly slow pace. In comparison, Israel, which is currently the world leader in vaccine delivery, ranks 14 per 100 people.
The UK is at about 1.4 per 100 and the US – where states have hit their heels when administering injections – sees 1.3 vaccines per 100 residents.
Now health experts say it’s crucial for Canada to pick up the pace.
“Canada is off to a slower start,” Kerry Bowman, a professor of bioethics and global health at the University of Toronto, told Global News. “And every day and week that passes, we run the risk of falling further and further behind.”
In Canada’s largest province, Ontario, 42,419 people have been given their first chance since Dec. 14, according to Global News.
Ryan Imgrund, a biostatistician who works at Ottawa Public Health, called that number “shamefully” low.
“We’ve been hoping for this vaccine for some time now and it’s still in freezers. We still only vaccinate four (to five) thousand people a day (in Ontario). It’s a shame, ”he said to the outlet. “With 5,000 people a day, it would take eight years to vaccinate all of Ontario at this rate.”
Like the US, two vaccines have been approved for us in Canada: Pfizer-BioNTech, which was approved on December 9, and Moderna on December 23.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised that the majority of Canadians will be vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 2021.