The vaccine math is daunting
September vow puts pressure on provinces
OTTAWA • Since last November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said all Canadians who want a COVID-19 vaccine will have one by September.
Trudeau, his ministers and MPS have all repeated that promise despite a slowdown in vaccine deliveries that has seen Canada fall behind the world for vaccinations during the last month. It’s a promise to Canadian voters and now a political liability should the government fail to deliver.
Trudeau repeated it again on Friday when he announced increases in scheduled deliveries from the two approved vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna. He pledged those companies will have delivered 84 million doses of vaccine by the end of September.
“We’re continuing to work every single day, at getting as many doses as possible, as quickly as possible, into Canadians arms,” he said.
but an Angus reid poll released on Friday showed that just 28 per cent of Canadians are confident that the September number is achievable and 36 per cent of people believe it will be 2022 before they have their shots.
In a meeting with health care workers Thursday, Trudeau called the coming months “the big lift,” an end to a period of vaccine scarcity and a new challenge to get millions of doses out and administered.
The math of Trudeau’s oft-repeated pledge is daunting.
From coast to coast to coast, approximately 38 million people call this country home, but not all of them can receive the two currently approved vaccines. Neither Pfizer nor Moderna tested their candidates in those under 16 leaving them off the list for shots for now. If children remain left out of the initial effort, the government will have seven million fewer arms in need of a vaccine.
That would leave 31 million Canadians waiting. despite the rollout’s early challenges, more than a million people have had at least one dose and if the government’s schedule holds, three million more people should be fully vaccinated by April, leaving 28 million to go. About 10 per cent of adult Canadians have told pollsters they will refuse a vaccine, and that hesitancy has been in decline, but it is still likely to reduce demand by at least two million people.
All those reductions leave Canada with about 26 million people waiting for their shots, and all of them will need two doses. If vaccine hesitancy shrinks considerably or new research makes the case for providing them to children that number will grow.
between April 1 and Sept. 30 there are 26 weeks, meaning the provinces will have to put at least two million doses per week into the arms of Canadians. For Ontario, Canada’s largest province, that is nearly 110,000 shots per day — every single day — from April to the end of September.
Any weeks that don’t hit the target, either because of another slow down in deliveries or a failure by provinces to get the vaccine into arms, will increase the pressure on future weeks down the road.
The federal government could get more help if other vaccines in regulatory review, from Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and Astrazeneca are approved, but that will only increase supply of vaccines and increase the pressure on provinces.
The closest comparator to what provinces are faced with is the annual flu campaign. A ramped-up effort this year dispensed 5.1 million shots of flu vaccine in Ontario, about a quarter of what Ontario will have to do for COVID. Alberta dispensed more than 1.5 million shots between late September and early February.
Stephen Warner, a spokesperson for the Ontario government, insisted they were ready for more COVID vaccines.
“Ontario currently has the capacity to vaccinate nearly 40,000 people per day, and we are building to triple or quadruple that capacity to reach all Ontarians as quickly as possible,” he said in an email to the National Post.
After finishing with longterm care homes and healthcare workers, the Ontario government is planning large vaccination sites in the second phase of its plan and believes it can vaccinate as many as 150,000 people every day.
“Over the coming months, those sites will include municipally run vaccination sites, hospital sites, mobile vaccination sites, pharmacies, clinics, primary care settings and community locations such as community health centres and Aboriginal health access centres,” Warner said. “We are working to ensure these sites are ready by late winter in time for phase two to begin."
Warner said Ontario is waiting only for the federal government to get deliveries to them before it ramped up.
“As soon as we have confidence in steady supply and regular deliveries from the federal government we’ll continue to ramp up.”
Nova Scotia said it has a flexible system capable of scaling up when vaccine deliveries increase.
“Our clinics are able to ramp up or ramp down to ensure vaccines continue to flow into arms as we wait for regular shipments to increase,” said health department spokesperson Marla Macinnis.
Pfizer will deliver 403,000 doses next week and in the following week they will ship 475,000 doses. Moderna is sending a reduced shipment to Canada that week, but still expects to deliver 168,000 doses.
The government has pledged a total of 23 million doses will be delivered between April and June and with a further ramp up in the summer to deliver the 55 million remaining doses in Pfizer and Moderna’s contracts.
early in January, provinces struggled to keep pace with federal deliveries and vaccines were stuck in freezers. Maj.-gen dany Fortin, who is overseeing the distribution plan, said he is confident the provinces are ready.
“We are well aware at all levels of scope and size of what we will face in the coming weeks and months. Provinces are assuring us that they have good plans in place,” he said.