Canada was hovering around 35-40th in the world for doses administered per capita until the USA "loaned" us 1.5M doses of AZ; now we're steady around 15th place, but well behind countries like the USA and UK.
Point of interest, one thing 4 of the 5 OECD member states above Canada have in common is that they manufacture the vaccine at home.
Considering Canada does not manufacture ([edit] COVID) vaccines, I'd say that Canada is doing very well - top quintile of the OECD pack. Could be better, could be worse.
[edit] I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US - 35% vs 45%. Given all the critical press, I'd assume the discrepancy was much larger.
That's smart. Why did the current administration decide not to do it in Canada?
I think without pointing fingers, the COVID situation has shown the world just how fragile global supply chains are in times of stress. The US learned this lesson with PPE, if you remember that debacle.
Hopefully Canada invests in such capacity moving forward.
Canada was once a dominant player in the vaccine game, but those days are long since passed, especially after the privatization of Connought under Mulroney.
In my opinion this would be a good opportunity to revisit a Crown Corporation devoted to vaccine development, as it does appear the public sector is not well set up to cater to this national security need. We are just 38M people after all. Maybe under the NRC?
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/domestic-vaccine-manufactur...
Generally it was understood that most western countries would not abuse this dependency for their own benefit, as they all were counter-dependent on each other. Obviously, as so often, the US and UK didn't get that memo.
There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries.
The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries.
The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract.
Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it.
If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement recently? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.
Who benefits? China, Russia, etc.
Why spend time questioning why China is not being as cooperative as they should with the origin and other important details of the virus when they can make Germans hate Brits and Canadians hate Americans over vaccine exports?
The comparison is deceptive, since most of those 45% of Americans have finished two doses (apparently 32% as of May 4 [1]) while very few of the Canadians have (3% [2]). In other words, we've put a fair bit less than half as many shots in arms per person.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/9609011...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/9609011...
tl;dr: is that spreading out the dosage of Moderna vaccine to 9-15 weeks actually makes it a more effective vaccine. Spreading out Pfizer, more relevant to Canada, also reduces the number of hospitalizations and deaths over the recommended schedule. [1]
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
The results of this primary analysis of two doses of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 were consistent with those seen in the interim analysis of the trials and confirm that the vaccine is efficacious, with results varying by dose interval in exploratory analyses. A 3-month dose interval might have advantages over a programme with a short dose interval for roll-out of a pandemic vaccine to protect the largest number of individuals in the population as early as possible when supplies are scarce, while also improving protection after receiving a second dose.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Either way, though, the US is either considerably or extremely ahead of us still.
That's because you're looking at first doses only. The numbers for fully vaccinated residents are very different -- Canada's policy is explicitly "we don't have enough vaccine to give everyone two doses yet, so we're going to give first doses first and second doses up to 4 months later".
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
USA has no choice. By agreement, USA cannot give vaccines to someone else, as the indemnity agreements ("can't be sued") don't transfer.
Or just get canada to agree to the terms. Pretty sure canada has already agreed to similar terms elsewhere.
Current make-up of delivered doses is:
Phizer: 11m
Moderna: 3.5m
AZ: 2.3mIf Canada did their 2nd dose in the 3-4 weeks as required by Pfizer and Moderna, their rank would drop precipitously.
Personally I understand what they are doing, they are going breadth first to slow down the spread, but I hate the propaganda that is saying that somehow Canada is doing "great". They aren't. They completely bundled the vaccine.
The delayed 2nd shot is a resourceful strategy (also employed in the UK) to get higher population immunity from fewer shots in the short term.
This is false. The numbers might be small, but people are certainly getting and have already gotten their second doses in the last couple months.