74 per cent of Manitobans to be vaccinated by year’s end: plan

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This article was published 06/01/2021 (1407 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government has no idea how the federal government will manage its goal of immunizing all adults by September.

Its figures show that under current arrangements, only 74 per cent of the province’s population will be vaccinated by year’s end. The figure is in a document titled “Manitoba’s Immunization Rollout Plan” which cautioned its estimate was a “planning projection only.”

The document shows how many doses Manitoba expects to receive of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines monthly. It does not account for the federal government approving other vaccines it has signed contracts to purchase, such as the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Health Department provided the Free Press with information used to create the chart, which is based on the number of Manitoba adults, 1,068,553 by the end of 2020, by the province’s count.

The projection shows 53 per cent of adults would be immunized with both doses by the end of September, and 74 per cent by the end of December.

Doses would gradually increase, with a doubling from February to March, a month when 60,000 adults would be immunized, and a peak of 85,500 people being immunized in September.

Cumulatively, that would mean 790,050 Manitobans would be immunized by Dec. 31.

The Pallister government said the figures show Ottawa has failed to get enough doses to meet its targets. Several premiers raised that point this week, in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chiding them for administering less than half the doses they’ve received.

In Manitoba, the NDP argued the projections reveal the Tory government’s “a major failing.”

“We came into 2021 with 100 per cent optimism about this year. But based on this news today, we’ve got to revise our optimism down to 70 per cent,” NDP Leader Wab Kinew told reporters.

The Manitoba government did not say how it got the figures used in its projection.

Canada has purchased a combined 116 million doses of the two approved vaccines, enough to vaccine 1.5 times the population, though Ottawa has not laid out a timeline for the Pfizer and Moderna doses to be shipped to provinces.

— with files from Michael Pereira and Carol Sanders

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca