over the past week, alberta has completed an average of 17,808 first doses per day, a significant drop from more than 40,000 daily doses two weeks ago. if the current pace is sustained, the province will hit the 70 per cent benchmark in six days, triggering stage 3 of reopening on june 29.
some areas of the province have already well surpassed the threshold, including the city of calgary, where 73.3 per cent of those 12 and over have their first shot. other rural and remote regions have seen only a fraction of that uptake, including high level, where only 18.7 per cent of eligible residents have had at least one shot — though that number is likely under-reported, as regional provincial data does not include some aggregate data from first nations.
timothy caulfield, a canada research chair in health law and policy at the u of a, said the province must work to ensure every community is protected against covid-19. he said alberta is getting to “crunch time,” immunizing the remaining few per cent of albertans who will get a shot.
“we need to have a degree of provincewide protection in order to justify opening up our economy and reducing our public health restrictions,” caulfield said.
“i think that we do need to have a more targeted approach. i like to believe that individuals in all these different regions, there are still individuals there who want to get vaccinated. we also have to make sure there aren’t access issues, that there aren’t issues with people getting to the sites, that there aren’t things like needle phobia, which is a phenomenon that impacts many canadians, and there are ways to deal with it.”