With COVID-19 vaccinations ramping up across provinces and territories, a new poll suggests that despite Canadians’ overall confidence in the rollout, many are expressing concern over the type of vaccine available to them.
A new Ipsos poll done exclusively for Global News found that over 60 per cent of Canadians were confident that the country would be able to meet the government’s goal of vaccinating most Canadians by the end of September.
“What we’re seeing in the data related to vaccines is that Canadians have been keeping a pretty close eye on what’s happening and they understand that progress is being made, maybe not enough progress — particularly in comparison to other countries — but certainly progress from where it was before,” said Darrell Bricker, Ipsos’ CEO of public affairs.
“And as this tide of vaccines raises boats, it’s raising all boats.”
While the poll found a “growing majority” of Canadians wanted to get their vaccine shots as soon as possible without hesitation, many expressed concern over what type of vaccines were available to them.
The data showed that 64 per cent of Canadians thought their decision to get the vaccine would depend on what type of vaccine they were offered, while over eight in 10 stated they should be able to choose which vaccine they received.
Support towards making vaccines mandatory also grew nationally as well, growing to that of 69 per cent.
The strong sentiments Canadians felt in their choice of a vaccine doesn’t come as a complete surprise, however, after extremely rare reports of blood clotting disorders arose from recipients administered either the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccine.
Most recently, Health Canada announced Tuesday the country’s first case of blood clotting in a person administered the AstraZeneca vaccine. The U.S. has also paused its rollout of the J&J vaccine after six recipients developed a rare disorder involving blood clots.
Though the majority of Canadians are willing to be vaccinated, more than half of those polled also said they were still concerned about the potential long-term effects of the vaccine as well.
To date, Canada has vaccinated about one-fifth of its population — reaching another milestone in its fight against the deadly pandemic.
At least 7.68 million people in Canada have received a single dose of the vaccine, according to COVID Tracker Canada. The number differs vastly when compared to a tally of the population fully immunized with two doses of the vaccine, now standing at 2.1 per cent of the population.
The country’s accelerating vaccination progress comes as Canada gets thrown into its third wave of the pandemic, however.
New cases of the virus surpassed the country’s highest ever daily record last Friday, with over 9,000 new cases for the first time since the pandemic began.
ICUs are also beginning reach their limits, with the country’s top doctor and several other public health experts sounding the alarm of an impending capacity crisis.
Though as more Canadians continue to feel confident about the country’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout progress, approval ratings for the prime minister and provincial premiers saw boosts as well.
“So the expectations are there. What we’ll see now is whether or not they’re able to perform,” said Bricker.
“Yes, it looks like there are some people who are concerned about this, but in general, the mood is improving around vaccines at both the federal and provincial level.”
— With files from Global News’ Amanda Connolly and Hannah Jackson
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between April 7 and 9, 2021, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,001 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.