After a slow start that saw Canada lagging well behind its peers in vaccination rates, Canada’s efforts in getting citizens the jab are ramping up.
Currently, around 22 million doses have been administered to Canadians and 50 percent of the population has received at least one dose. Nearly five percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
While these full coverage numbers still significantly trail countries such as Israel (57 percent fully vaccinated), the United States (40 percent), and the United Kingdom (35 percent), momentum is gaining. Last week saw Canada administering a rolling average of 370,000 doses per day.
This is welcome news for a country anxious for the normalcy that widespread vaccination rates promise, but how can we keep this pace up? Preventing vaccine hesitancy will be crucial in getting as many Canadians protected as possible. Now that we have steady supply coming in, what can we do to keep up demand and maximize participation in this program?
Discussing this issue on Yahoo Finance Canada’s Crisis Management show are host Alicja Siekierska and The Hub’s Sean Speer.
So far, Speer explains, most jurisdictions have prioritized material incentives. But this isn’t the only tact they could take.
“The most effective incentive wouldn’t merely be focused on material conditions, it would also have a moral aspect to it that, in effect, would combine an appeal to self-interest with an appeal to social solidarity. There seems to be evidence in the policy scholarship that that sweet spot between self-interest and solidarity will have the most impact on individual behaviour.”
