Lack of vaccines -- again

Here in Canada we have witnessed firsthand the challenges of COVID vaccine administration due to lack of procurement supply from the Trudeau Liberal government.

To put this in perspective, Washington State between January 25-29th went from having administered over 500,000 doses of COVID vaccine to 616,589 doses.

That is an increase of 116,589 doses in a matter of days.

Here in B.C., over the same time frame, we went from having administered 119,850 doses up 129,241 doses. 

This is an increase of just 9,391 doses by comparison.

This is by no means a criticism of the Provincial Health Officer or any of the regional health authorities.

Simply put, provinces cannot vaccinate citizens without sufficient vaccine supply.

For these reasons Canada has now fallen to 15th place in terms of total doses of vaccine administered per country.  

Canada drops even further behind if factoring in the total number of vaccination doses administered per 100 people in the population.

With that being said, for developing and third world countries, this situation is far more dire. 

For this reason, the World Health Organization (WHO) partnered with GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance) to pool funds from wealthy countries to provide COVID vaccine for poor and developing countries. 

This partnership is called the COVAX program.

In May of 2020, the Prime Minister announced a $600 million contribution to this global effort.

Of this $600 million, $475 million will be spent in direct contributions and the $125 million remainder to the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFI).

This week we learned that the Trudeau Liberal Government has made the decision to access vaccines from the COVAX program that is intended to help poor and developing countries.

Canada is the only G-7 country to do this.

This decision has raised serious concern.

The Globe and Mail has reported that the organization “Doctors Without Borders” has warned there is a danger that Canada’s use of COVAX could contribute to global health inequities. 

The vaccine in question is 1.9 million doses of the, yet to be approved in Canada, AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.

My question this week:

Do you agree with the Trudeau Liberal Government to access vaccine from the COVAX program?

​I can be reached at Dan.Albas@parl.gc.ca or call toll free 1-800-665-8711.