‘We got it wrong’: Ontario apologizes for pausing vaccinations during holidays

The head of Ontario’s Covid taskforce has apologized for “pausing’” coronavirus vaccinations during the Christmas holidays, as frustrations mount across Canada over a slow rollout of the drug.

Officials in the country’s most populous – and worst-hit – province shortened the hours of vaccination clinics on 24 December and closed them on 25 and 26 December, citing staffing concerns. By Tuesday, all 19 had reopened.

“We shouldn’t [have] made that decision. I take responsibility for that,” retired general Rick Hillier, head of the province’s Covid taskforce, told CTV News. “And clearly, we got it wrong. We’ve been slammed, we’ve been spanked, we’ll pick up our game.”

Canada was one of the first nations to approve the Pfizer and Modern vaccines and has the highest rate per capita of secured vaccine contracts with drug manufacturers, but its rates of vaccination lag behind other countries that have also approved the drug.

The United States, Britain and Bahrain have all vaccinated residents at a faster rate. On Sunday, Israel vaccinated nearly 100,000 people in a single day – nearly double Canada’s total vaccinations over a two-week period.

Canada’s efforts have been hampered by the requirements of deep-cold storage needed for the Pfizer vaccine, as well as poorly executed vaccination programs in some of the provinces.

While Ontario has received 96,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, it has administered only 14,000 doses. Until this week, officials had been withholding the supply of the drug to ensure everyone already vaccinated received the required second dose.

Following criticism from healthcare workers and infectious disease specialists, however, the province has announced plans to ramp up vaccinations in the coming days and will no longer reserve doses.

“We will not take any more days off until we win this war against Covid-19,” Hillier told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the province will open four more vaccination sites in the coming days.

Ontario, which posted a record of 2,553 new cases and 41 deaths on Tuesday, is not the only province that halted vaccinations over the holidays.

In Manitoba, which recently had the worst per-capita growth rate in new infections, officials shuttered vaccination clinics on 23 December, only reopening them on Tuesday.

And in parts of British Columbia a number of vaccination sites were closed for the holidays.

“With the statutory holidays and the logistics involved in operating these clinics, clinics were closed on Christmas to give healthcare staff a much-needed, albeit short, break over the holidays,” the province said in a statement.

For those on the frontlines, delays and confusion have added to the mounting frustration and fatigue.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why would we delay something that would be preventing future deaths?” Dr Nili Kaplan-Myrth, an Ontario-based family physician, told CBC News.

Frustration over the slow rollout comes as Canada’s northern territories receive their first doses of the Moderna vaccine, a drug that requires far less intensive storage and is better suited to remote Indigenous communities and areas without robust healthcare infrastructure.

Canada currently has more than 74,000 active cases and 15,000 deaths. The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has expressed hope that most of the population will be vaccinated by September.