CNN segment highlights Canada’s vaccine rollout, pandemic struggles

A third wave of COVID-19 has Canada on the ropes, fueled by variants, with cases still climbing and almost double the amount of people in intensive care compared to a month ago.

The Americans are now pointing the spotlight north as Canada surpasses the U.S. with more cases per capita.

“This is a concerning uptick considering the Canadian vaccine rollout is not going well,” said Jake Tapper on the CNN program The Lead.

“By comparison in the U.S., more than one in three Americans have gotten at least their first shot. In Canada, fewer than one in five received their first shot.”

Canada’s vaccine supply is much lower and instead relies on other countries due to a lack of domestic production.

President of the Ontario Hospital Association, Anthony Dale, tweeted on Monday night saying “we need Justin Trudeau and the Government of Canada to act and secure more vaccine supply with the same sense of urgency that hospitals are demonstrating in Ontario as they move heaven and earth to deal with juge wave of COVID patients needing critical care.”

Canada is reportedly one of the only countries in the world to be dealing with all three variants of concern and the rapid increase in cases in recent weeks reflects this.


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The federal government is expecting Moderna to make good on a previously promised batch of 855,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses that were expected last week, but have yet to arrive.

Those delayed doses along with a little more than one million shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine represent the extent of Canada’s expected vaccine deliveries this week, even as the number of new COVID-19 cases across Canada continues to surge.

The country is not expecting any shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine this week. Canada has also approved a vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson, but it is not clear when the first of those doses will be delivered.

More than 10 million doses had been distributed across Canada as of Monday night, according to covid19tracker.ca, with over 8 million having been administered.

-With files from the Canadian Press

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