Prime Minister François Legault was keen to set the record straight on Quebec’s vaccination campaign after his federal counterpart, Justin Trudeau, was exasperated by the slowness of his deployment.
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“Contrary to what Justin Trudeau says, all the vaccines that we receive every week are used every week,” insisted the leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec on Wednesday when announcing the establishment of a cover. fire in the province.
According to François Legault, Quebec has the possibility of inoculating up to 250,000 people per week. However, the federal government has planned to send only 233,000 doses to the province by the end of January.
“So there is no problem, we could vaccinate four times as many people as we currently do, but we do not have enough doses,” he said.
“I want to send a very clear message to Justin Trudeau: instead of lecturing the provinces on standards in CHSLDs and on vaccines, although he first takes care of supplying us with vaccines. ‘also takes care of monitoring the follow-up that is done with travelers returning to Canada, ”added François Legault.
The pass of arms between the federal and provincial governments continued in the evening. “Nearly 50,000 doses of vaccine lie dormant in freezers in Quebec. That’s more than half of the doses delivered. Deliveries are accelerating. We must accelerate the pace, “assured the parliamentary leader of the Liberals, Pablo Rodriguez, on Twitter.
“The doses don’t sleep. They are deployed and will all be used. You can send us three times. We are going to use them all very quickly ”, quickly replied the Minister of Health Christian Dubé under the tweet.
The latter had previously reiterated, at a press conference, his government’s objective of administering a first dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 to 250,000 Quebecers by the end of January.
Tuesday, Justin Trudeau had described as “frustrating” the slowness of the deployment of vaccination campaigns in the provinces.
He reacted in particular to the slowdown in the number of vaccines administered daily in Quebec after the entry into force of a new public health directive on New Year’s Eve.
The government announced on December 31 that it would now use all doses of the vaccine in its possession to immunize as many people as possible from priority groups.
A certain delay in the delivery of these thousands of new doses now available explained the low number of Quebecers vaccinated compared to the number of vaccines available.
But the slowdown was ultimately short-lived and Quebec announced Wednesday it had inoculated a record 6,221 people.
This is a marked increase compared to previous days. As of Monday, 2,529 Quebecers had received a dose of vaccine against COVID-19. From December 31 to January 3, only 2,851 doses could be administered.
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