Canada will receive 3.3 million doses of Covid vaccine

[GTranslate]TORONTO – An important new step forward in the immunization campaign against Covid-19 in Canada. As the federal government has confirmed, record dose supplies will arrive this week from three different vaccine companies: a total of 3.3 million doses in seven days, a figure not touched since the vaccination campaign began in our country. To understand the extent of what could really represent the turning point after the difficulties of recent weeks, just think that from December to today a maximum of 6,207,530 have been sent to Canada, according to covid-19 vaccination tracker data. With supplies coming this week, we will exceed 9.5 million doses delivered to Canada.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine will arrive in our country in the coming days, along with 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca. Moderna, on the other hand, Thursday will send about 800 thousand doses to Canada.

It is clear that at this point the real challenge will become logistical. The doses will in fact be distributed proportionally between all the Provinces and territories and from here the individual regional task forces will have the task of sorting them to the individual local health units. In recent weeks, in this triple step, setbacks have emerged that have slowed down, even significantly, the entire immunization campaign, so much so that of all the doses that have already arrived in Canada, only 83 percent have been administered: also according to Covid-19 Vaccination Tracker,  the doses inoculated to Canadians were 5,203,359. Without taking into account the 3.3 million doses coming in, there are still over a million doses that are already in our country but that have not yet been administered.

 At the provincial level, the situation changes depending on the area of the country under consideration. Ontario, up to this point, is above the national average: it received 2,353,665 doses and administered 2,031,735, or 86.3 percent of the total. Quebec – the other province most affected by the infection and death pandemic – has proved even more efficient, with 1,261,855 doses administered out of 1,380,295, or more than 91 percent.

The province that has recorded the best results to this point is Saskatchewan (92.4 percent doses administered compared to those that arrived), while at the bottom of the ranking are Nova Scotia (53.8 percent) and Nunavut (52.5 percent).

Across Canada, there are also 668,596 fully immunized people, having received the first and second dose of the vaccine. On this front, a further step forward in the vaccination campaign in Canada could come from the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, the fourth to have been given the green light by the Canadian regulator: the first deliveries are scheduled in April for the only single-dose vaccine on the market so far, capable of immunizing against Covid-19n with a single injection.