Canada this week surpassed the U.S. in the proportion of its population that has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, although much of the country remains under tough economic restrictions and only a fraction is fully vaccinated.
As of Thursday, 48.5% of the Canadian population had received one or more doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to Our World in Data, a University of Oxford project tracking the global vaccine rollout. In the U.S., 47.9% of the population had received one or more doses.
The U.S. remains far ahead of Canada in terms of the proportion of its population that is fully vaccinated, at nearly 38%. Canadian authorities are delaying follow-up vaccine doses by up to four months because of supply constraints, leaving just 4% of the Canadian population fully vaccinated.
Still, experts say looking at how many people have received a first dose can be a useful metric because it provides an early indication of what proportion of a country's population is willing to be vaccinated. The U.S. saw rapid growth in daily vaccinations earlier this year, but the pace of daily doses administered has slowed since mid-April, after roughly 38% of the population had received a first shot.
President Joe Biden said earlier this month that he wants to see 70% of adults receive at least one Covid-19 vaccine by July 4.
Canada, by contrast, had a sluggish start to its vaccination campaign because of limited supply. That allowed more time for Covid-19 variants to take hold, contributing to the biggest rise in infections since the pandemic began and putting significant stress on some hospital systems.
The third wave of cases also prompted another round of school closures and stay-at-home orders in some regions. Canada's two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, this week unveiled plans to gradually ease restrictions, tied in part to the number of vaccine doses administered.
Kerry Bowman, who teaches bioethics and global health at the University of Toronto, said it was possible that watching Americans receive their vaccines much sooner and experiencing the impact of soaring Covid-19 variant cases contributed to Canadians’ willingness to receive a vaccine.
“We were really falling behind quite a bit, and I think it kind of spooked people,” Prof. Bowman said. Now that the supply of vaccines has increased, he said, Canadians are lining up to be inoculated, with little sign of that demand abating.
A poll by the Angus Reid Institute released earlier this week suggests demand for vaccines has continued to rise in Canada, with 82% of adults surveyed in mid-May saying they had either received at least one dose or wanted to be vaccinated as soon as possible. That was up from 71% in early April.
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