Israel sets the example of how to mass vaccinate 2:33
Ottawa, Canada (CNN) -
Like most older people in Canada, David and Carol Green have been patient and even in a good mood in the face of the pandemic waves that have kept them confined to their homes for nearly a year.
But your patience, if not your sense of humor, is wearing thin.
They say they still have no idea when they will get that important "arm shot" and a chance to get back to a normal life.
Biden says there will be enough vaccines for 300 million Americans by the end of July
“On the one hand, you're trying to be reasonable, and then on the other, you're screaming like crazy and saying… you know, 'what's going on here, why aren't we doing something else?'” Carol said as her husband David nodded. with his head from his home in Stouffville, Ontario, just outside of Toronto.
(Photo by ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP via Getty Images)
The Government of Canada thought it could pay to participate in the global vaccine race and on its way back to normal life.
But as its vaccine supply dwindled to a minimum in February, Canada remains on the sidelines of that race despite buying more doses of vaccine per capita than likely any other country on Earth.
On the surface, Canada got off to an early start in buying vaccines in April of last year, although the government says it was unable to convince any company to produce them on Canadian soil.
And ultimately, it was the timeline - the fact that manufacturers did not prioritize Canada for doses this winter - that sealed the fate of millions of Canadians still waiting to receive a vaccine.
"We haven't heard anything about what the near future holds other than the fact that we might see some supplies coming into the country in April, and that's very frustrating for me," David told CNN.
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To date, Canadian officials say, nearly 1.2 million doses have been administered, vaccinating less than 3% of their population, a fraction of the doses administered in the United States and the United Kingdom.
And now it is also lagging behind most European countries.
By comparison, the US has vaccinated at least 10% of its population and the UK nearly 20%.
Canadians have close ties to people in those two countries and many have started to hear from friends and family that they have been vaccinated or have an appointment for it.
As a retired nurse, Carol is acutely aware that new and highly communicable variants are lurking in older people and that the need for vaccines is increasingly urgent.
"This pandemic is such a huge thing and no one has ever had to do this before, and it's just, just fixing problems all the time, and I realize that from a logical point of view," Carol said.
But there is an emotional part and that is difficult, it is really difficult, because you question yourself, you question other people in power and you say, 'well, how come they are doing better there and we are not doing better? here?
And why aren't we getting vaccinated? '
Carol says that even though they are in good health, it is increasingly difficult to accept that there is no precise timeline for when they will receive their vaccination.
Where are the vaccines from Canada?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps his promise: All Canadians who want a vaccine will receive it in September.
To fulfill that promise, Canada says it has purchased nearly 400 million doses from seven vaccine manufacturers.
To date, only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been licensed for use in Canada.
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While Canada says it has spent nearly a billion dollars to purchase those vaccines, the country has not been at the forefront of the line to receive them.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have significantly slowed deliveries to Canada after a combination of manufacturing delays and demands from Europe, where Canada sources its doses, to restrict exports of vaccines subject to European approval.
Canada did not attempt to obtain any vaccine doses from the US after the Trump administration indicated that it would not allow the export of any vaccine.
"The week-after-week turbulence we are seeing is cause for concern and we are watching it closely and staying at it," Trudeau said at a press conference last week.
But let me assure people that we are still very well on track, as promised, of getting those six million doses by the end of March, because that's what the CEOs of vaccines keep telling me, and I'm happy to reassure Canadians about it. '
This is how Mexico progresses with vaccination against covid-19 4:20
For Canada, vaccines could be plentiful in the spring, but months late to help the vulnerable who are still refugees and fear new variants of the virus.
"The bottom line is that every delay is the loss of life, and that's the tragedy of it all," said Jillian Kohler, a professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a consultant to the World Health Organization.
“This is not something that we can just sit back and say, 'oh, we didn't think about this' or 'we didn't know that vaccine manufacturing is complex and there are delays,' but the reality is when we slow down (vaccination) there is lives that are lost needlessly and that is unacceptable.
With the few vaccines that have been delivered, Canada has prioritized long-term care facilities, places where Covid-19 has taken a deadly price.
The government has also made an impressive effort to vaccinate remote and indigenous communities where health services are lacking.
The government indicated this week that in some outposts in the north of the country, more than 90% of the adult population had already been vaccinated.
This can save lives, but in the short term it will not change the lives of most Canadians.
Professor Kohler says that rather than "stockpiling" vaccines, the Canadian government should have realized months ago that without any domestic manufacturing capacity, it would be at the mercy of manufacturers and fierce global competition for doses.
“Having the sovereignty of vaccines is essential.
Relying on exports for critical health needs makes no sense, frankly, when we look at trends in nationalism, "he said.
Canada signed a tentative agreement with the US vaccine firm Novavax to produce millions of doses of its candidate covid-19 vaccine at a facility in Montreal.
But that production probably won't start until the end of this year at the earliest.
The Greens say they read the news and understand the difficulties, but this month they will miss their granddaughter's eighth birthday and say "that hurts."
"Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because I feel like we're really falling behind, so to speak, you know," Carol said.
And he added that, like the Christmas holidays, they will celebrate the birthday virtually.
Canada Coronavirus Vaccine