{"id":9375,"date":"2025-10-28T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=9375"},"modified":"2025-11-04T14:44:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T19:44:13","slug":"pharmacists-urge-vaccination-as-fewer-than-half-of-canadians-plan-to-get-their-flu-or-covid-19-shots-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/pharmacists-urge-vaccination-as-fewer-than-half-of-canadians-plan-to-get-their-flu-or-covid-19-shots-this-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Pharmacists urge vaccination as fewer than half of Canadians plan to get their flu or COVID-19 shots this fall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>October 28, 2025 (Ottawa):&nbsp;<\/strong>As Canada enters another respiratory virus season, pharmacists are urging Canadians to protect themselves and their communities as new polling shows vaccination intentions remain low.<\/p>\n<p>According to a new&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pharmacists.ca\/cpha-ca\/assets\/File\/cpha-on-the-issues\/CPhA-VaccineSurvey-Oct2025.pdf\">national survey<\/a>&nbsp;conducted by Abacus Data for the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA), 43% of Canadians plan to get their seasonal flu shot, and 29% intend to receive a COVID-19 vaccine this fall. Most concerning, nearly 4 in 10 Canadians (39%) say they don\u2019t plan to get either vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBased on our national survey, the number of Canadians with plans to get vaccinated against both flu and COVID-19 is lower than we\u2019d like to see heading into this season,\u201d said Sadaf Faisal, Director of Professional Affairs, CPhA. \u201cPharmacists are concerned that too many people may forgo vaccination and leave themselves vulnerable as respiratory viruses start to circulate.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Lingering complacency as virus season begins<\/h2>\n<p>While it\u2019s too early to predict how severe the season will be, respiratory infections are already circulating across Canada, including influenza, COVID-19 and RSV.<\/p>\n<p>Low vaccine intentions in CPhA\u2019s recent polling point to lingering complacency that may be discouraging some Canadians from getting vaccinated. Pharmacists and other health experts continue to emphasize the importance of vaccination\u2014particularly for older adults, children, pregnant individuals and those with underlying health conditions\u2014as the best protection against serious illness and hospitalization.<\/p>\n<h2>Affordability could become a barrier<\/h2>\n<p>With some provinces moving away from fully publicly funded COVID-19 vaccination programs and introducing fees for people outside of high-risk eligibility groups, pharmacists are concerned that cost could discourage Canadians from getting vaccinated and widen protection gaps.<\/p>\n<p>National polling supports these concerns: more than three-quarters (77%) of Canadians said they would be unlikely to get a COVID-19 vaccine if required to pay about $100 for it. This highlights the importance of maintaining publicly funded and easily accessible vaccination programs to ensure broad protection across the population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>October 28, 2025 (Ottawa):&nbsp;<\/strong>As Canada enters another respiratory virus season, pharmacists are urging Canadians to protect themselves and their communities as new polling shows vaccination intentions remain low.<\/p>\n<p>According to a new&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pharmacists.ca\/cpha-ca\/assets\/File\/cpha-on-the-issues\/CPhA-VaccineSurvey-Oct2025.pdf\">national survey<\/a>&nbsp;conducted by Abacus Data for the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA), 43% of Canadians plan to get their seasonal flu shot, and 29% intend to receive a COVID-19 vaccine this fall. Most concerning, nearly 4 in 10 Canadians (39%) say they don\u2019t plan to get either vaccine.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/pharmacists-urge-vaccination-as-fewer-than-half-of-canadians-plan-to-get-their-flu-or-covid-19-shots-this-fall\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pharmacists urge vaccination as fewer than half of Canadians plan to get their flu or COVID-19 shots this fall<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[96,1389,18,77,14,15],"class_list":["post-9375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-canadian-pharmacists-association","tag-covid-19","tag-influenza","tag-sars-cov-2","tag-vaccines","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9375"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9377,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375\/revisions\/9377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}