Canadian virus concerns rise, hesitancy over vaccine falls
Poll results
OT TAWA • Canadians are more worried than ever about COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy is falling alongside those fears, putting more pressure on politicians to get shots in arms as soon as possible.
New polling from Maru/ Blue public released exclusively to the National Post shows 70 per cent of Canadians are now concerned about catching the virus. The second wave of COVID-19 is reaching new highs this month, as the country added 7,817 new cases Monday and an additional 117 people died from the virus.
Concern is highest in Ontario, with 72 per cent of people worried about getting the virus, but even in Atlantic Canada where the virus is relatively controlled 64 per cent of people are still worried.
Maru/ Blue’s polling was conducted last week reaching 1,505 randomly selected Canadian adults in the company’s online panel. It also showed vaccine hesitancy is falling dramatically.
Respondents were asked how they would respond if they were offered a chance to get a vaccine in the next week. In December, 55 per cent of respondents said they would get it immediately, a big jump from just a month before when only 36 per cent of people responded the same way.
There are still 36 per cent of Canadians who want to wait, according to the poll, and 10 per cent who don’t intend to get the vaccine at all, but those numbers both fell in the last month.
John Wright, the firm’s executive vice- president of public opinion, said the story of the virus is moving into a different chapter.
“We’re right at that stage where there’s huge public expectations, huge concern about catching it,” he said. “I suspect, with the increased concern about getting the coronavirus and the expectations now up, very significantly, that people want to get this vaccine immediately; the pressure now turns on the federal government.”
The federal government has insisted it is providing vaccines to provincial governments as quickly as possible and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that he was frustrated that many of the vaccines were still sitting in freezers.
Provinces turned the corner last week however, getting more vaccines out to front- line health care workers and residents in longterm care.
According to the COVID- 19 Canada Open Data Working Group, a tracking project involving researchers at the University of Toronto and University of Guelph, the provinces had administered 319,000 vaccine doses and received 545,250 doses.
Wright’s firm also asked respondents how they thought governments were doing on the vaccine rollout and 57 per cent of Canadians said Trudeau was doing a good job getting the vaccines delivered, while 55 per cent said the provinces were doing a good job getting the vaccines into arms.
Ontario and Alberta had lower levels of satisfaction with the vaccine rollout than other provinces. Wright said even if Trudeau is ahead now, that could change as time goes on and provinces start catching up. He said people want the crisis to be over and are more nervous about the virus than ever and will have a low tolerance for vaccine delays.
“That speaks to an anxiety and an anxiousness across the country,” he said. “This is the turning point where the federal government is going to come under increasing scrutiny.”
Alberta’s government got the lowest mark in the country from its citizens on how the province was handling vaccines, with only 34 per cent seeing Premier Jason Kenney’s government as doing a good job in the poll.
Wright said Alberta’s government is getting scorn across the board, probably not helped by several of Kenney’s MLAS travelling abroad over the holidays.
Only 10 per cent of Albertans thought provincial ministers were setting a good example and only 25 per cent said Kenney was.
Wright said in Alberta and Ontario residents are deeply disappointed in their government’s pandemic response and that is coming through in the polling. He said politicians travelling on vacation during the crisis only made the situation worse.
“The public just looks at that and says, you’re not meeting your promises, and you’re not meeting expectations.”