Canada has administered at least 1.4 million more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine over the last week, according to the latest data from Health Canada.
The new inoculations now bring the country’s total number of vaccines administered to just over 4.8 million as of Friday — up from last week’s tally of 3.48 doses million on Mar. 20.
As of Mar. 20 — the latest date with government data available on whether one or two doses were administered to recipients — over 9.1 per cent of Canada’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The data also includes over 2.85 million people receiving one dose and another 630,000 people, or 1.6 per cent of the population, receiving two doses in order to be fully inoculated.
Global News will update those figures once that new data becomes available.
Canada earlier this week also marked over a record 100,000 doses of the vaccine being administered per day.
Experts have previously told Global News that despite both the increasing rate of vaccination and new shipments of doses to the country, more has to be done in order for the federal government to reach its goal of having most Canadians inoculated by September.
“It’s not even remotely fast enough,” Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, told Global News earlier this week.
According to Furness, should Canada continue at a rate of 100,000 vaccines administered per day, it would take 10 months to achieve inoculation levels high enough for herd immunity given the 31.5 million people over 16 that are eligible for the vaccine — assuming each shot was a person’s first dose.
If the federal government expects to hit its vaccine targets by September, Furness said around 400,000 shots need to be administered per day.
Despite Canada’s vaccine numbers having increased significantly from when shipments first began arriving, the country’s rollout continues to slump behind that of other similarly developed nations.
According to Our World In Data, Canada’s vaccination rate currently stands at 12.7 per 100 people. The United States, on the other hand, is vaccinating at a rate of over 40 shots per 100 people, the U.K. at just over 47, the UAE at over 78 and Israel at more than 114 vaccine doses per 100 people.
The U.S. alone has administered over 136,684,688 vaccinations to date — around 27 per cent of people in the country receiving at least one shot.
To date, Canada has diagnosed over 961,000 cases of COVID-19 in the country, while over 22,850 people have since died. Average daily infection rates of the virus continue to increase, with case numbers in some parts of the country reaching figures that not been seen for months.
— With files from Global News’ Emerald Bensadoun