A new era began in Canada one year ago on January 25, an era that the vast majority of us wish had never come.
On this date in 2020, Canada’s first positive case of the coronavirus, later known as COVID-19, was found in a Toronto hospital, setting us on a path we are still unfortunately on as part of a worldwide pandemic.
In one year’s time, the number of COVID cases has grown to over 755,000, with 674,000 recoveries and 19,301 deaths, as of Monday. In Saskatchewan, there have been 22,416 positive cases and 254 deaths.
These are mind-boggling numbers and hard to grasp, when one thinks of each of those numbers representing an individual who tested positive and had to fight the illness that resulted.
Most people who get the virus recover, but in the meantime there are those who have underlying health conditions and are not in a position where they can fight the infection.
Thus we have vaccines on the way which will hopefully provide most of the population with the ability to battle the coronavirus.
The rollout of the vaccines is not going as well as hoped, and indeed not as well as most other countries. Canada has the distinction of receiving no Pfizer vaccines this week, and only receiving a fraction next week of what we were supposed to be getting.
In spite of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s attempt to justify this lapse, it’s clear that in spite of all the supposed big deals with vaccine companies for millions of doses, this wasn’t planned out very well, and as a result Canada is far behind many countries in getting their most vulnerable and frontline health care workers vaccinated first.
One of the difficulties this lack of vaccine deliveries causes is, many of those who are supposed to get a second dose are going to be delayed because there simply aren’t any doses left. This reduces the efficacy of the vaccine, but hopefully this won’t cause further health problems in those who received their first dose.
People are getting tired of all the restrictions and rules, and many people are being cheated of the events, sports and lifetime moments they should be able to enjoy and celebrate, and this taking a real toll on people’s mental health as it drags out.
We need reliable sources of the vaccines, from whichever company is able to provide them, and we need to roll them out as soon as possible.
The vaccines are not a magic bullet that will cause COVID to disappear, but it will provide the ability for people to have some normalcy in their lives. We all need this, and we all want our freedom back, but we’re dependent on our federal government to make it happen.
