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.
OTTAWA • Though most Canadians don't support mandatory vaccination, an overwhelming majority say they'll get the vaccine if their employer makes it necessary in order to keep their job, a new poll reveals.
In total, 80 per cent of Canadians say they would agree to get vaccinated if their employer required them to do so, reveals a Léger poll conducted in late January on behalf of the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS).
The impressively high number was eye-opening for ACS CEO and president Jack Jedwab, who says he was initially surprised at how many respondents were ready to accept such a corporate vaccine policy.
That's because a poll he commissioned just one month previous showed that Canadians were mostly cold at the idea of the federal government making a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory to all residents. (In total, 40 per cent thought it should be mandatory, whereas 55 per cent wanted it to be voluntary.)
“What struck me was the distinction between the extent to which the population feels that should be mandatory and the extent to which they're willing to submit to getting vaccinated when their employer requires them to do so,” Jedwab said in an interview.
Ultimately, he says, it's likely because people understandably respond much more to potential consequences to their employment than mandatory government policy.
“We're talking about your livelihood. You know, that's at the top of the list of priorities for most people,” Jedwab said.
But he says his data raises a new question: instead of thinking about making vaccination mandatory, should the federal government mobilize employers to make sure the country hits the critical mass of vaccination that would end the rampant spread and thread of the COVID-19 virus?
Absolutely, Jedwab says, pointing to the fact that some major employers in the United States have already demonstrated their willingness to contribute to vaccination efforts.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby announced in January that the company was “strongly considering” making vaccines compulsory for staff who would want to continue working there.
“I think the right thing to do is for United Airlines, and for other companies, to require the vaccines and to make them mandatory,” Kirby said, according to a transcript reported by Reuters.
“If others go along and are willing to start to mandate vaccines, you should probably expect United to be amongst the first wave of companies that do it.”
Jedwab says many Canadian companies would likely follow suit, and that the Trudeau government should be encouraging them — as well as community groups and civil leaders — to do so.
“Employers could play a critical role because of their capacity to get employees to vaccinate. It can be essential,” he said.
“To reach the required population immunity level in order to go back to a more normal life is going to take a concerted effort that will involve employers as well as civil society leaders.”
Despite the high number of Canadians who would get a vaccine if their employer required it, the remaining 20 per cent are quite on the opposite side of the spectrum of acceptance.
In fact, half of those opposed said they would file an official complaint against their employer should that occur, whereas one quarter of them (so five per cent of all respondents) say they would start looking for a new job right away.
“Those who are against it are definitely staunchly opposed to it,” Jedwab said. “This is certainly an important critical question going forward.”
“Of course, if you're an anti-vaxxer and you're in that situation, it's going to be very hard to work through this and I suspect employers will be sensitive to some exceptional situations.”
His data also notes a slight difference in responses between provinces, whereas Quebecers are the least likely to accept the idea that their employer makes vaccination mandatory (though they are just as ready to get vaccinated voluntarily as the rest of Canadians).
“Quebecers seem a bit more resistant to the idea, whereas the most support for the idea is with Ontarians and Atlantic Canadians. That is interesting because Atlantic Canada has the lowest number of cases and Quebec has the highest number of cases per capita,” he noted.