Toronto
If you are impatient with the pace of Covid-19 vaccine distribution in the US, count your blessings. At least you don’t live in Canada. According to the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data website, my country had only administered 3.52 doses of vaccine per 100 people since Wednesday. The US also did it nearly five times at 5pm. The figures were 80.07 in Israel, 25.04 in the UK and 5.40 in the European Union.
Why is Canada such a laggard among developed countries? Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government did not negotiate contracts with established pharmaceutical companies. Instead, it quietly approved a working relationship between Canadian researchers and a Chinese vaccine manufacturer, CanSino Biologics Inc. CanSino left his project in August after several failures. Ottawa then had to speed up agreements with Pfizer, Moderna and other companies. “I wouldn’t have put all our eggs in China’s basket,” Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole told reporters.
When Canada and other countries saw a significant spike in Covid-19 cases last month (which has now declined), Pfizer cut its shipping to my country by more than two-thirds for several weeks. Moderna announced that only three-quarters of its vaccines would arrive in Canada in early February.
Other options are currently off the table. Although Canada has purchased a total of 398 million doses, more than 70% are vaccines that have not received approval from health officials. The liberals pointed their fingers at pharmaceutical companies and provincial governments.