The U.S. is so glutted with vaccines some states have started giving them to Canadians out of pity
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Canada has made great strides in its vaccination regime in recent weeks. Nevertheless, as tens of thousands of envious locked-down Canadians are well aware, we’re still way behind the United States. At 37 per cent coverage, the United States is now one of the most vaccinated countries on earth. And, unlike Canada, the U.S. does not mandate a four-month gap between its vaccine doses, meaning that Americans are fully immunized 3.5 months sooner than their Canadian counterparts.
It’s inevitable that a vaccine-poor country sharing a 9,000 km border with a vaccine-glutted country would yield some arbitrage. Below, how Canadians are slipping over the border to capitalize on some sweet, sweet American COVID shots.
It’s remarkably easy for non-residents to get a COVID shot in the U.S.
“We landed in the USA Friday night, and Saturday morning we were fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” reads a recent blog post by Montreal’s Andrew D’Amour, co-founder of the travel website Flytrippers. In early April, D’Amour booked a vaccination appointment at a Tom Thumb grocery store in Dallas, caught a flight the next day to Texas, and will eventually re-enter Canada by road to avoid mandatory hotel quarantine.
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With virtually all of the U.S.’s most vulnerable demographics now fully vaccinated, most states have opened up vaccination to everyone over the age of 16. Proof of U.S. citizenship is not required to get the shot. However, many state immunization authorities have also made it clear that their shots are intended for their own residents, and not out-of-staters or foreign nationals. “If you do not live or work in Washington, please do not make vaccine appointments,” reads the official webpage of the Washington State Department of Health.
Enforcing those residency requirements has been another story. U.S. vaccination has increasingly been outsourced to private pharmacies, some of whom, like the drug store giant CVS, have openly declared they would not be checking IDs. As one vaccine patient at a California Walgreens told the San Francisco Chronicle in March, “there’s zero requirement to prove anything.” For Canadians willing to fib about their eligibility on an online form, a COVID-19 jab could be obtained at a cross-border pharmacy simply by making an appointment online.
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In recent weeks, meanwhile, some states have begun dropping even the most basic residency requirements for immunization. Texas, where D’Amour got his shot, does not require any proof of state residency. Since March 29, the vaccine eligibility webpage for the Louisiana Department of Health has just been a large banner reading “everyone in Louisiana ages 16 and older is eligible to get vaccinated against COVID-19.”
Not all Americans have been pleased with foreign nationals swooping in to receive vaccines paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. In January, Florida tightened residency restrictions on its COVID shots after it emerged that the state was being targeted by vaccine tourists from Canada, Central America and even South Asia.
D’Amour, for his part, justified his Texas shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine by writing “if they didn’t want non-residents getting vaccinated, they simply wouldn’t allow non-residents to get vaccinated.”
The Americans are surprisingly liberal about letting Canadians over the border
U.S./Canadian land border crossings are closed to non-essential travel. This means that if you drive up to Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge and tell them you’re going to Disneyworld, Homeland Security agents will probably turn you away.
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But the “non-essential” restrictions do not apply to anyone arriving in the U.S. by air, sea or rail. Right now, to fly into the United States for any reason (including hitting up their excellent domestic vaccine regime), all you need is a negative COVID-19 test.
Although Ottawa has discouraged non-essential travel since early 2020, it’s actually been possible for Canadians to fly into the U.S. throughout the entire pandemic. That’s how thousands of Canadian snowbirds were still able to spend the winter of 2020 at their second homes in Florida. When Florida began rolling out vaccines to seniors around Christmastime, these snowbirds would become some of the world’s first Canadians to be fully vaccinated. And even after Florida’s crackdown on vaccine tourism, most of these snowbirds continue to be eligible for shots by virtue of having a fixed Florida address.
However, it’s on the return trip that Canadian vaccine tourists risk getting in trouble at the hands of their own government if they aren’t careful. Just this week, a B.C. dual-citizen was slapped with a $3,450 ticket by federal quarantine authorities after he took a day trip into Washington State to obtain his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
It wasn’t the vaccine that got him the ticket, but the fact that he hadn’t fulfilled the Canadian border requirement of securing a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of his re-entry to Canada.
Many U.S. border towns are now openly giving shots to Canadians
If an elaborate trip into the U.S. just to get the COVID jab seems a bit much, you’re in luck: A growing number of U.S. jurisdictions are now freely handing their extra vaccines to Canadians either out of pity, largesse, or economic expediency.
North Dakota led the charge earlier this month with a program to use excess doses to immunize Manitoba-based truck drivers who cross their shared border. “With adequate vaccine supplies and all North Dakotans having access to vaccine while Canada is dealing with a vaccine shortage, we want to do our part to ensure essential workers from Canada who are frequently travelling through our state are vaccinated,” said North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. This week, North Dakota then expanded the program further to include Saskatchewan truckers and even Manitoba teachers.
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Last week, the Blackfoot Confederacy in Montana administered its surplus vaccines to First Nations over the Canadian border, as well as residents of the town of Cardston, Alta., a largely Mormon settlement of 3,500 people. “The mobile clinic was a great success, very emotional and no one who attended was turned away,” wrote the confederacy in a statement. The shots were administered at the appropriately named Medicine Line, the Blackfoot name for the U.S./Canadian border.
And in Alaska, Governor Mike Dunleavy has just offered to vaccinate the entire B.C. town of Stewart, hoping it would facilitate a quicker reopening of the border Alaska shares with both B.C. and the Yukon. As Dunleavy told the Associated Press, “our neighbors to the east are fantastic. We couldn’t ask for better neighbors than the Canadians. But the virus has really hit them hard and as a result, their mitigating approaches have affected us greatly by slowing down traffic, limiting traffic.”
For thousands of Canadians already jumping the queue on Ottawa’s laggardly vaccine rollout, it has simply been a matter of asking their American neighbours very, very nicely for extra shots.
• Email: thopper@postmedia.com | Twitter: TristinHopper
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How to jump the queue by getting your COVID shot in the U.S. - National Post
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