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According to a recent study, Saskatchewan residents are the most hesitant in Canada when it comes to deciding whether or not they want to get vaccinated for COVID.
In a survey done on 1,319 people from around Canada, including 104 people from Saskatchewan, 24 per cent of people surveyed in the province said they were unsure about taking a COVID vaccine.
Despite the current hesitancy, the province is pushing almost 20,000 vaccinations a day, showing the demand has continuously outweighed the current supply of vaccines coming into the province.
Microbiologist, virologist and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Pathogenesis of Emerging and Re-Emerging Viruses are just a few of the titles that Dr. Jason Kindrachuk with the University of Manitoba has.
He spoke on Gormley on Thursday about vaccine hesitancy in Saskatchewan.
He believes it’s important to separate people who are hesitant from people who are anti-vaccination.
“The risk of severe COVID is far greater than any risks associated with vaccines,” Kindrachuk says.
“When we look at the vaccine development for COVID, certainly this has been different than anything else we’ve seen in history in regards to the time frame in which they were developed.
“All the same criteria for safety and efficacy had to be met and we already had years of research prior to the development of these COVID specific vaccines that had already given us a lot of prior clinical information.”
Kindrachuk says he is often asked questions about the long-term effects of being vaccinated or the speed at which the vaccines were developed.
“When you look at the criteria that is required for the emergency use versus the full approvals, to me, they go through the same rigour,” Kindrachuk said.
“The safety and efficacy data had to be there. We don’t have a lot of room for error, whether it’s at the regulatory level or at the scientific level.
“Even though we’re seeing a very small composite of what has gone into the development of these vaccines to push them out into the market, there’s been years of research and data that has been compiled that has gotten us to this point.”