Samuel Lozano Fornari // Edge Columnist
The COVID-19 pandemic is slowly coming to an end. Vaccines are slowly arriving to Canada, in fact, Public Health expects spending $5.3 billion, a huge amount of money, in both Vaccines and different treatments said Mia Rabson in her article “Canada has set aside $5B for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments.”
It was known that vaccines alone would cost around $1B, but now an accurate price is public, the reasons of the price change are mostly clauses with drug makers.
Most of the treatment is supposed to arrive after March 31. In terms of speed, Canada is behind the U.S, as the U.S hopes to have vaccines for all Americans by the end of May, as President Joe Biden twitted.
The number of vaccines Canada is getting is around “240 million doses of seven different vaccines” as Mia Rabson said in her article. This number is 6 times bigger than Canada’s population, meaning that there’s at least 6 vaccines for each person (that does not mean that you have to get 6 vaccines), the doses should be enough for all the population.
Even if the country is getting 240 million doses, only 6.6 million arrive before the end of March, this is not a big number, it’s around a fourth of Canada’s population. Compared with the production of the United States this is really slow.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today that Canada’s vaccination campaign could wrap up before September” says John Paul Tasker in his article “An earlier end date for vaccination campaign is ‘possible’, Trudeau says”. Although the change in the schedule is only a possibility, seeing a possible “back to normality” earlier than what people though it’s really recomforting.
Although Canada is already buying the vaccines and doing everything, the U.S might help Canada because of their closeness in the world map, said Alenxander Panetta in his article “Where should U.S. vaccine production go next? Canada and Mexico, says one lawmaker”. This benefits Canada and it’s another reason of why the country will probably get all the vaccines earlier.
Canada is getting a good number of vaccines, and the money that’s being invested is not a worthless waste, because it’s saving lives. Canada may not have the fastest supply of vaccines and treatments, but it is not slow neither. Although the doses are not coming immediately, it will be worth the wait.
The vaccines come from seven different providers, and that’s probably positive, it means that there’s a “Plan B” in case the 2 aproved vaccines don’t work.
Sources:
“Canada has set aside $5B for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments” by Mia Rabson
“An earlier end date for vaccination campaign is ‘possible’, Trudeau says” by John Paul Tasker
“Where should U.S. vaccine production go next? Canada and Mexico, says one lawmaker” by Alexander Panetta