Rollout plan is confusing and late
Finally, some genuinely good news on the vaccination front. With the first half-million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine now being distributed, a fourth vaccine approved for use in Canada, and the door open to accelerating the rollout across the country, there are lots of reasons to celebrate.
At the same time, though, it’s apparent that some provinces (including Ontario) just aren’t as ready as they should be to make sure this crucial campaign, the key to restoring normal life after a brutal year, goes as smoothly as possible.
Exhibit A is Ontario’s inexplicable and frustrating delay in getting its online booking system for mass inoculations up and running.
When former general Rick Hillier, the province’s vaccine czar, announced on Feb. 24 that the site wouldn’t be ready until March 15, he explained the delay by saying it wouldn’t be needed before then. “It is not needed till at least the third week of March that we're into a category where we actually need bookings at mass vaccination clinics or in pharmacies,” he said.
But that was then, when Canada was still struggling to get adequate quantities of vaccines. And this is now, when (thank goodness) the taps are finally opening and we have a real prospect of getting a significant share of the population protected sooner than we thought would be possible.
Surely governments, including Ontario’s, should have anticipated potential good news as well as bad, a full year into the pandemic. Surely the province should have done absolutely everything to make sure it was ready for the vaccine rollout after spending weeks sniping at Ottawa for failing to get sufficient supplies into the country.
That was a costly and humiliating episode, and it isn’t over yet. Having been stiffed for much of February in deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Canada fell badly behind in every international comparison.
This country is still an embarrassing 43rd in the share of population vaccinated (5.6 per 100 people, as of Thursday, well behind not only the richest countries but many other middleranking ones like Poland, Serbia and Turkey.)
But the arrival of the AstraZeneca vaccine, approval of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson version, more Pfizer supplies than expected on the way, and the expert advice that it’s OK to delay a second dose of vaccines for up to four months means many more people can get their jab sooner than planned. The federal government’s much-vaunted strategy of contracting for supplies from many sources is finally paying off.
This is all excellent news and there’s every reason to expect that Canada will quickly improve its performance in vaccinations — if the provinces manage to follow through and get those needles into arms.
On Friday, Ontario, updated its vaccination plan to reflect the hopeful new reality. The extra vaccine supply and the delay of second doses means more people will get their shots sooner than previously expected, bring ever closer the blessed day when we can declare COVID-19 finally defeated.
That’s very positive. But it doesn’t change the fact that the biggest province is still scrambling to get its act together and make sure Ontarians can actually get these new vaccine doses in an orderly manner.
The province-wide booking system still won’t be ready for another 10 days. The next week will be spent on “process improvement,” i.e. testing the system rather than accepting names from people anxious to get their lifeline to normality.
Confusingly, though, some people can register for a shot, depending on where they happen to live. While most health regions (including Toronto) wait for the provincial booking site to go live before launching their mass immunization programs, ten others have already set up their own systems and have been inoculating people over age 80 for days.
That’s led to needless confusion, as seniors in Toronto and many other areas sit and wait while others in the same situation, a few towns over, receive the life-saving shots.
Rather than a seamless, province-wide distribution model we’re ending up with a patchwork system that’s leaving many people confused and frustrated. In Toronto, for example, some hospitals have started their own vaccine registration systems, potentially leading to people registering at multiple locations in hopes of getting a shot.
This past week the province also brought pharmacies into the picture. But it’s still not known which ones will take part, only that a pilot project in three regions will start this coming week. Family doctors, who routinely administer other kinds of vaccines, complain they’ve been left out entirely. Frankly, it all smacks of improvisation.
It shouldn’t be like this, and indeed it didn’t have to be. It’s been obvious for months, in fact since the start of the pandemic, that vaccines would eventually arrive and a system for distributing them would be needed.
No doubt all this will be sorted out in the coming days and weeks. And the flood of vaccines about to wash over the country will ensure that, one way or the other, everyone who’s willing to accept a dose will get one.
But it could have — should have — been a lot smoother than it’s turning out.
That was a costly and humiliating episode, and it isn’t over yet