Hope, in a long battle

Monday was one of the most hopeful days since the COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives, but also one of the most worrisome.

The source of the hope is obvious: hundreds of thousands of doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are to start arriving in Canada next week. If all goes as planned, it looks like the first Canadians to be vaccinated will get their shots before Christmas.

That’s wonderful news for the country, and not incidentally it’s great news for the Trudeau government as well. It had promised that the first vaccines would arrive in January, but pressure was growing fast to do better than that. Especially as Canadians start seeing images of people elsewhere getting their shots (Tuesday will be “V-day” in Britain, when the National Health Service there kicks off its vaccination program).

So Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement that vaccines will indeed arrive sooner than expected was a welcome surprise. Some suspect the government managed expectations to create that effect. But even if it’s true, who cares? Under-promise and over-deliver is a time-tested principle of good management.

The government said “up to” 249,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine will arrive by the end of December, enough to vaccinate half that number of people (it takes two doses to provide protection against COVID). It’s barely a start toward immunizing the entire population of 37 million, but it is a start. And nine long months into the pandemic, that counts for a very great deal.

But Monday was also a worrisome day, and the source of the worry was obvious as well. As Trudeau was announcing the early arrival of the Pfizer vaccine, others were reporting numbers that make it all too clear that this disease is far from done.

In fact, on current trends it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and at this point no vaccine can arrive quickly enough, and in big enough quantities, to stop that from happening.

Ontario, to start with, announced a record one-day number of new COVID cases —1,925. The five-day average is now1,820 new cases a day, up from 1,570 just a week ago. The trend is relentlessly upward, just as the holiday season approaches with its inevitable increase in socializing, no matter the pleas of public health officials.

In Toronto, there were 651 new cases and the medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, called the situation “very, very serious.” COVID-19, she said, “is spreading aggressively in Toronto.” And that’s despite the new lockdown imposed just over two weeks ago.

The sobering fact is that in many parts of the country, Toronto and neighbouring areas included, we are entering what may be the most dangerous phase of the pandemic. The number of new cases is rising relentlessly and the pressure on the medical system is growing.

In this context public confidence is key, and it’s essential that the rollout of the vaccines, when they come, be flawless. It’s excellent that the Pfizer vaccine is arriving sooner than expected, but it’s also apparent that its ultra-cold storage requirement creates challenges.

It won’t be sent to the northern territories or remote communities, for example, and in Ontario it turns out it may not be possible to administer it directly in hard-hit long-term-care homes. Staff working there may have to get it at a central distribution point, said distribution commander Gen. Rick Hillier, which would leave out the patients themselves. Problems like that must be ironed out as quickly as possible.

It’s also likely there will be gear-grinding over exactly who should be on the vaccine priority list, and in what order. It will be distributed to provinces on a per-capita basis, and already Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has created unnecessary divisions by grumping that the higher-than-average proportion of Indigenous people in his province may short-change other Manitobans who aren’t considered “priority.”

The last thing anyone needs are squabbles over who is more or less deserving of protection from COVID-19, least of all squabbles tinged with racial overtones.

The arrival of the first vaccine may be the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. But there’s still an awful lot of tunnel to get through. It will be months before enough of the population is vaccinated to make a difference. In the meantime, there can be no let-up in the fight to keep the disease in check.

It’s barely a start toward immunizing the entire population of 37 million, but it is a start