But their patience, if not their sense of humor, is running out. They say they still have no idea when they will get that all-important “shot in the arm” again and a chance for a normal life.
‘On the one hand you try to be reasonable, and on the other you shout your head off and say … you know,’ what’s wrong here, why don’t we do something else? Carol said as her husband David nodded in agreement from their home in Stouffville, Ontario, just outside of Toronto.
The Canadian government thought she could pay to enter the global race to vaccinate her way back to normal life. But when vaccine supplies dwindled to a trickle in February, Canada remains on the sidelines of that race, despite buying more vaccine doses per capita than likely any other country on Earth.
Canada apparently started buying vaccines early in April last year, although the government says it cannot convince companies to produce them on Canadian soil. And in the end, it was the timeline – the fact that manufacturers didn’t prioritize Canada for doses this winter – that sealed the fate of millions of Canadians still waiting for a vaccine.
“We just haven’t heard anything about what the near future holds for us, other than the fact that we might see some supplies coming into the country in April, which is very frustrating for me,” David told CNN.
To date, Canadian officials say they have administered nearly 1.2 million doses, vaccinating less than 3% of the population – a fraction of the doses administered in the United States and the United Kingdom – and it is now ongoing behind most European countries as well.
In comparison, the US has vaccinated at least 10% of the population and the UK nearly 20%. Canadians have close ties with people in both countries, and many are starting to hear from friends and family who have received a vaccine or have an appointment to get one.
As a retired nurse, Carol realizes all too well that the new and highly transferable varieties are creeping up on the elderly and that the need for vaccines is growing.
“This pandemic is so massive and nobody has ever had to do this before, and it’s just, just troubleshooting all the time, and I realize that from a logical standpoint,” Carol said. “But there’s an emotional part of it and that’s hard – it’s really hard, because secondly you guess yourself, you doubt other rulers and say, ‘how come they are doing better there? And we’re not doing it here better and why aren’t we getting the vaccine? ”
Carol says that while they are in relatively good health, it is getting harder to accept that there is no precise timeline for when they will get their vaccine.
Where are Canada’s vaccines?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps his promise: Any Canadian who wants a vaccine will get one by September.
To deliver on that promise, Canada says it has purchased nearly 400 million doses from seven vaccine manufacturers. To date, only the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been approved for use in Canada.
While Canada says it spent nearly a billion dollars to buy those vaccines, the country hasn’t been at the forefront of receiving those vaccines.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have significantly delayed deliveries to Canada following a combination of production delays and demands from Europe, where Canada buys its doses, to limit vaccine exports subject to European approval.
Canada has not attempted to withdraw vaccine doses from the US after the Trump administration indicated it would not allow vaccines to be exported.
“The turbulence we see week after week is a concern and we are watching it closely,” Trudeau said at a news conference last week. “But let me reassure people that we are still well on track as promised to get those six million doses by the end of March, because that’s what the CEOs of the vaccine keep telling me, and I’m happy to reassure Canadians about that. . “
For Canada, vaccines may be in abundance in the spring but months too late to help the vulnerable who are still in hiding and fearful of new virus variants.
“The bottom line is that any delay is lost in life, and that’s the tragedy of it all,” said Jillian Kohler, a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and a consultant to the World Health Organization. “This isn’t something we can sit back on and say, ‘oh, we didn’t think about this’ or ‘we didn’t know vaccine production is complex and delays occur’, but the reality is when we slow down (on vaccines we have lives that are needlessly lost and that is unacceptable. “
With the few vaccines delivered, Canada has prioritized long-term care centers, places where Covid-19 has taken a deadly toll.
The government has also made an impressive effort to vaccinate remote and indigenous communities where health services are lacking. The government said this week that some northern outposts have already vaccinated more than 90% of the adult population.
This can indeed save lives, but in the short term it won’t change lives for most Canadians.
Professor Kohler says that instead of “hoarding” vaccines, the Canadian government should have realized months ago that without any domestic production capacity it would be at the mercy of manufacturers and fierce global competition for doses.
“Having vaccine sovereignty is critical. Relying on exports for critical health needs, frankly, doesn’t make sense when looking at trends of nationalism,” she said.
Canada has signed a preliminary agreement with US vaccine company Novavax to produce millions of doses of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate at a facility in Montreal. But that production is likely to start late this year at the earliest.
The Greens say they read all the headlines and understand the complexity, but they will miss their granddaughter’s eighth birthday this month, and they say “it hurts”.
“Yeah, absolutely, because I just feel like we’re really behind the harvestmen, you know?” Carol said, adding that just like the Christmas holidays, they will be celebrating the birthday virtually.