Canada passes US in its percentage of people fully vaccinated

Canada’s roll out of vaccines picks up pace as US redoubles efforts to convince vaccine skeptics

The percentage of people in Canada that have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 has surpassed US figures, according to data from the Canadian government.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 48.6 per cent of Canadians have been fully vaccinated.

The corresponding US figure, as published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is 48.4 per cent of Americans fully vaccinated.

Based on these percentages, 16,612,850 Canadians and 160,686,378 Americans are now fully vaccinated.

This week Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that fully vaccinated US citizens and permanent residents may be allowed to visit the country for non-essential purposes from mid-August.

A wider opening up of Canada to fully vaccinated people from all countries is possible by early September.

The border between the US and Canada has been closed since March 2020 by mutual agreement.

Canada has also surpassed the US in the number of people who have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine with 69.4 per cent of citizens and residents having partial immunity to the virus.

In the US, the number is 55.9 per cent.

The percentages of those eligible for the vaccine — those aged 12 and over — are even more impressive. As much as 79.7 per cent of Canadians and 65.3 percent of Americans have received one dose.

Fully-vaccinated eligible citizen totals are 55.8 per cent and 56.6 per cent respectively, with the US edging out Canada.

The Biden administration fell short of its Fourth of July target of 70 per cent of Americans having had one shot of the vaccine.

Vaccine skepticism and hesitation in some US regions have caused a surge in new infections in recent weeks with states including Arkansas, Florida, and Missouri seeing a wave of new hospitalisations. The government continues to urge all Americans to take the vaccine.

Slightly more than a quarter (26.1 per cent) of the global population has received at least one dose of a vaccine against the coronavirus, according to Our World in Data which aggregates information from national governments.

Only one per cent of people in low-income countries have received a dose.