[GTranslate]TORONTO – Covid vaccination in Canada and Ontario does not take off. And this in the face of an overall deterioration of all the main indicators – number of cases, admissions, Covid patients in intensive care, deaths, and transmission rate – which is added to the concerns related to the new variants, more aggressive and virulent, which have now become predominant in our country. At the federal level, there has been a breakthrough on the vaccine side in recent weeks. With the progressive increase in supplies of three of the four vaccines approved by the regulator, Canada is following the delivery roadmap signed with vaccine companies Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. On the contrary, from this point of view, in the coming weeks, we will see a progressive and significant increase in deliveries, with the stated goal by the federal executive to reach the 40 million doses delivered by the end of June.

Official data updated yesterday by covid19tracker.ca  tell us that Canada has received and distributed 10,243,470 doses to the Provinces and Territories. Of these, 7,155,588 were administered, or 69.9 percent of the total. This means that despite the urgency of injecting at least one dose to all citizens over the age of 18, to arrive at the long-awaited herd immunity against Covid-19, at the moment there are over 3 million doses throughout the country waiting to be inoculated. In this case, it is useful to remember, the responsibility and competence are all borne by the individual provinces and territories: Ottawa in fact deals with supplies coming from abroad and subsequent sorting to local authorities. From that moment it is instead the task of the provincial administrations to take care of the logistical aspect and that related to the actual vaccination of residents.

In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, 4,031,325 doses have arrived since early January, of which 2,834,784 have been administered. About 1.2 million doses are missing from the appeal, which is in the refrigerators of hospitals and mass vaccination centers. Yesterday, the health authorities announced, about 108 thousand doses were inoculated, compared to 104 thousand on Wednesday: this is a record, but this is not at all positive news. The numbers are still too low and at this rate, the goal of giving at least one dose to everyone by July 1st appears to be a chimera. We need the breakthrough, especially in the areas where Covid runs the most.

In Ontario, the hope is that with the progressive lowering of the minimum age to get vaccinated there will also be a significant increase in doses inoculated daily.

At the percentage level, the provinces that are doing best are Saskatchewan (administered 82.2 percent of the doses delivered by the federal government), Quebec and New Brunswick.