National Post (National Edition)
Ford's vaccine rollout going remarkably well
Lack of supply is holding Ontario back
The latest line of attack on the Ontario government's COVID-19 performance is that the vaccination program is confusing. Ontario's performance has been lacking in plenty of areas, but in this case, the bar for confusion has been set astoundingly low. The only people who should be confused are those who can't conduct basic online searches or use a phone.
There are three elements to the provincial vaccination plan. The major one is mass-vaccination clinics booked through the provincial system, either online or by phone. Age is the primary determinant of who is eligible. I've used the online system twice myself and it was simple, much like booking concert tickets back in the former world.
The other big piece of the plan is vaccinations through pharmacies. Again, an online search shows which pharmacies are delivering shots and how to book them.
Finally, there is a new program to vaccinate people between the ages of 18 and 49 in those areas the province has designated as hot spots. In this case, the province is working with public health units and community groups to organize pop-up clinics and mobile clinics. The idea is to take vaccines to workplaces and other spots where people congregate. The province has allocated 920,000 doses of vaccine for this program, but little of that is in hand yet. Some patience is required.
In comparison to Premier Doug Ford's inconsistent performance on economic shutdowns, the vaccination program is a masterpiece, a point that is getting lost at the moment. Earlier this week, Ontario delivered nearly 113,000 shots in a single day, a record. In all, more than 3.5-million shots have been administered. Another 2.8 million have been booked. Steady vaccine supply only started in mid-February. Ontario has made pretty good progress since then.
A media briefing on the vaccination program this week made the most important point of all: Ontario has been averaging about 100,000 doses a day, but is capable of administering 150,000 if it had adequate vaccine supply. There just isn't enough vaccine to meet the demands for vaccinating all front-line workers, including teachers, childcare workers and transit operators.
Ontario is expecting about 2.8-million doses of Pfizer vaccine and 750,000 of Moderna by May 24, but expecting and getting are two different things. Shipments of Moderna vaccine have been chronically late for more than a month. That limits what Ontario — and all other provinces — can accomplish.
If there is a legitimate criticism of the government's vaccination plan, it is its reliance on vaccination by age group rather than health or employment risk. Adding people in the hot spot zones is an attempt to correct that, but the government is, rightly, unwilling to abandon its old-people-first policy to redirect doses for seniors to hot spots instead.
It would be wrong, and would significantly undermine people's faith in the vaccination program, to start cancelling seniors' existing appointments to rush vaccines to the hot spots, as badly needed there as they may be.
And yet, that's exactly what Liberal leader Stephen Del Duca would do, were he the premier. In an opinion piece in the Toronto Sun this week, Del Duca argues that not only is registering for vaccines too “confusing,” but also that Ford is “hoarding” 1.2-million doses of vaccine. Actually, those 1.2-million doses are reserved for people who have made appointments for them.
But Del Duca's fix would be to cancel those appointments and make new appointments to give the vaccine to other people in hot spots instead, for a net gain of nothing. His main point, though, is that everything one can claim to be a problem with vaccinations in Ontario is Ford's fault. Del Duca's federal Liberal friends have done nothing wrong.
NDP leader Andrea Horwath, meanwhile, has gone down her own paranoid rabbit hole, yet again. Horwath is noted for seeing PC conspiracies everywhere and her latest argument is that the list of hot spots eligible for earlier vaccination has been rigged in favour of PC ridings. She has asked the provincial auditor general to investigate.
On Thursday, Ford released the rationale behind the list and zeroed in on one controversial area in west Ottawa that is part of Long Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton's riding.
Since January, the “K2V” postal-code area has had a significantly higher number of COVID cases and deaths and has a “racialized community” of more than 40 per cent. That gets it on the provincial list.
Ford accused the NDP and Liberals of politicizing the vaccine rollout, and they certainly are. If they wanted to do something constructive, and it seems unlikely, Horwath and Del Duca could stand up for Ontarians and put additional pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Ontarians need more doses of vaccine. They don't need self-serving partisan political attacks. Telling people that everything is going wrong when it's not is just irresponsible.
If there was sufficient vaccine, another 50,000 Ontarians a day could get protected from COVID. There's nothing confusing about that stark fact.