OTTAWA – Canadian authorities are trying to catch up in their quest to vaccinate vulnerable people against Covid-19, following an initial rollout that has been criticized by many public health officials as slow and disorganized.
While Canada quickly ordered vaccines and the use of the shot provided by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE was developed in early December – two days before the US approved it – the country has fallen behind some of its peers in developed countries in administering vaccinations.
Just over 0.5% of the population of the US’s northern neighbor was vaccinated on Wednesday. In comparison, the US had vaccinated 1.6% of the population by that date and Israel had vaccinated more than 18%, according to Our World in Data, a nonprofit research project at the University of Oxford. The UK had vaccinated about 1.9% of the population by January 3, the last date for which vaccination figures were available.
Public health experts say Canadian officials have struggled to move vaccine doses quickly from industrial freezers where they need to be stored to long-term care facilities where elderly residents are among the first inoculations designated. The rollout was complicated by a decentralized health system managed by individual provinces and territories and Ontario’s decision to pause vaccinations in the country’s most populous province during the holidays for two days.
The head of the provincial government’s vaccine task force, retired General Rick Hillier, later said the pause was the wrong decision, made in the expectation that long-term care homes would have fewer staff available to receive vaccines during the holidays.