Lately, certain Canadian media sources are comparing the high Israel vaccination rates for COVID-19, which rank number one in the world per 100,000 persons vaccinated. The comparisons are being used to blame the Canadian authorities for the current low vaccination rates: Canada currently ranking 29th place in the world. However, the comparisons may not be very fair given a number of critical factors and major differences between both countries.
For one thing, Israel was fortunate on January 7, 2020 to have struck an agreement with Pfizer to exchange citizens’ data in exchange for 10 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, including a promise of shipments of 400,000-700,000 doses every week. Ten million doses are a drop in the ocean for Pfizer, which has pledged to produce 1.3 billion vaccine doses in 2021 — and is likely to produce more. What was particularly interesting to Pfizer was that Israel was already capable of mass immunization and will provide details to Pfizer (as well as and the World Health Organization) about the age, gender and medical history of those receiving the jab as well as its side effects and efficacy. Canada was not in the same situation given a number of other factors, including its more decentralized health care delivery system involving the provinces.
Out of necessity, Israel developed a “militarization” capability over the years and its infrastructure is designed to quickly implement prompt responses to large-scale national emergencies, including attacks by any of its Arab state neighbours. When it comes to population, Israel’s population stands at about 9.2 million, compared to Canada’s at around 38 million people, four times that of Israel. More importantly, the State of Israel is contained in 27,869 square kilometers or 10,760 square miles, just barely bigger than New Jersey. Canada’s Vancouver Island alone is 1.38 times as big as New Jersey. Canada is approximately 9,984,670 sq km and stretches from the Pacific to Atlantic Oceans and to the Artic Ocean in the north. The simple geographic size of Canada is in itself a major concern with respect to transportation, isolated communities and weather patterns. However, like Israel, Canada is primarily an urban society with 81.5 percent of the total population living in cities compared to Israel where over 92 percent of Israelis live in urban areas.
Even with an adequate supply of vaccines to immunize Canada’s population, the vaccination campaign will likely be unprecedented in scale, especially to more remote communities in the north and to the indigenous population. Israel has a centralized system of government, a national health-system and a well-developed infrastructure for implementing prompt responses to large-scale national emergencies. On the other hand, Canada has a more decentralized health care network with the ten provinces being responsible for the actual vaccinations. This has raised the question as to whether the provinces will be ready to efficiently administer millions more doses when they finally arrive. Moreover, there will be millions of doses to deal with since Canada has contracts with Novavax, AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson, and other vaccine manufacturers. Despite delays with the arrival of first vaccines, Canada is expected to begin to receive millions of doses by the spring of 2021.
There is little doubt that some high-income countries like Canada and the U.S. are lacking several of Israel’s facilitating factors, apparently contributing to the current slower pace of the rollout in our countries. However, the fortunate thing is that both countries will soon enter into a mass vaccination campaign likely to be unprecedented in scale and requiring all of the available resources needed to provide access to people wherever they are situated. While some elements of Israel’s successful and timely vaccination campaign may be useful to duplicate, the vast differences between Canada and Israel reinforce the notion that “no one size fits all”. As in Israel, Canada’s campaign will require well-tailored outreach efforts to encourage Canadians to sign up for vaccinations and then show up to get vaccinated. This is the only way that any mass campaign can be successful in such a large and diverse country as Canada.
FROLITICKS 