Although health care is generally governed by the province, one person in Ottawa is in charge of two teams: active Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel and federal prisoners.

Of the 25 million doses of COVID-19 that have been delivered to Canada, 157,080 doses have been reserved for “Federal Grants”, including injections designated for the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Agency for Global Affairs.

The number of prisoners who have received vaccinations is high, but according to statistics released by the Department of Defense (DND) to CBC News, the number of CAF personnel who have received at least one dose of the vaccine is even higher.

More than 90% of all qualified CAF members, including regular troops and full-time reserve personnel who have served more than 180 days a year, have received one dose of vaccine, and 20% of them have been fully vaccinated – the second dose vaccination rate is almost ordinary The crowd reported four times.

In Canada, less than 55% of people have received the first shot of the vaccine, and about 5% have received the full vaccination.

Some CAF members have been at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19; personnel have been deployed to severely affected long-term care homes in Ontario and Quebec, and others have been sent to intensive care units with shortages of personnel.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense said that the exact number of CAF personnel in the first or second batch could not be released due to “combat security reasons,” but they did say that more than 70% of the 115,000 Moderna doses that have been allocated to the armed forces have been released. Get managed.

The spokesperson said: “CAF members continue to demonstrate their dedication in Canada’s fight against COVID-19. They have voluntarily received vaccination to stop the spread of this deadly virus.”

More than 10,000 shootings in prison

According to data provided by CSC, 9,613 prisoners have received at least one dose of Moderna vaccine, of which 1,266 prisoners have received two doses of full vaccination.

Compared with other races, white (80.2%) and indigenous prisoners (75.9%) have much higher vaccine coverage.

CSC data shows that as of May 24, less than 60% of colored African residents in federal prisons had been shot.

Imprisoned women are slightly more likely to be vaccinated; 77.6% of prisoners in female establishments have been shot, and 74.7% of prisoners in male prisons.

However, women in federal prisons in the Pacific region (British Columbia and Yukon) reported the lowest inmate vaccination rate in the country, with less than 63% of women getting a shot, compared with 85% of women in Quebec.

Although the vaccination rates in the two Atlantic provinces are the lowest in the country so far, federal data shows that less than 60% of adults in these four provinces have received the first dose of vaccine; 76% of CSC prisoners in the region have received Gave the first dose of vaccine. shooting.

Justin Piché is a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa and a director of the Carceral Studies Research Collective.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Piché and other prisoner rights advocates have been calling on the federal government to reduce the number of prisoners to stop the COVID-19 epidemic.

‘No political will’

Since the March 2020 pandemic, more than 2,100 cases have been reported in CSC facilities, including 1,530 prisoners and 607 staff. Although the numbers vary widely, at any given time, a total of 14,000 prisoners across the country have been detained.

Picche said that Ottawa basically did not consider the release of some criminals to reduce the demand for crowding-“He has no political will,” he said, but chose to focus on an active vaccination campaign, and it seems that work is in good condition.

(Last year, the number of federal prisoners dropped by about 13%, but Piché attributed it to court delays, which resulted in fewer people being sentenced.)

“During this pandemic, the federal government has done too little to reduce the number of prisoners living in the country’s largest gathering place. Instead, they chose to vaccinate to calm the heat they get from advocates, “He says.

“Even if the Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole provides vaccines to prisoners, there is some dissatisfaction, but the heat may be much less than when the mass release occurred.”

At the end of last year, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommended that prisoners become one of the first people to be vaccinated because they live in relatively crowded conditions and may be more susceptible to the virus.

Ottawa followed this advice when it started participating in the prison vaccination program in early January.

O’Toole subsequently criticized the plan to vaccinate 600 elderly prisoners, saying that it was unfair to vaccinate criminals against other groups of people. “No offender should be vaccinated before any vulnerable Canadian or frontline health worker,” He said in a tweet on January 5.

A spokesperson for the party’s public safety commentator, Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs, did not respond to a request for comment on the strong CSC vaccination rate.

Pisch said that reducing the spread of COVID-19 in prisons is important to the wider community because CSC workers can act as intermediaries to spread the virus to towns around these institutions. Prisoners released after serving their sentences are also at risk.

He said: “What happens behind the scenes will not stay there. It is a consequence for all of us. It is not only about the imprisoned, but also about everyone.”

“The CSC has given the first dose of treatment to so many prisoners very well, but we know that the first dose is not enough to contain it completely. They need those second doses. We need to solve the vaccine problem that some of them are still hesitant.”

He attributed the higher vaccination rate to CSC’s efforts to disseminate information about the safety and effectiveness of injections to prisoners’ families.

CSC also works with Aboriginal elders and liaison officers to provide culturally sensitive programs to Aboriginal, Metis and Inuit prisoners.

As for the lower vaccination rates for visible minorities, Piché said that this may be due to the distrust of ethnic groups in the healthcare system, given the influence of racism in the field. Pitch said, “There must be something wrong here.”

A spokesperson for CSC said that staff “continue to contact anyone who refuses to be vaccinated” to remind them of the benefits of vaccinations.

The spokesperson said that people who are not allowed to shoot can still be shot, and new admissions will also have the opportunity to be vaccinated.