Canada's flawed vaccine plan sends snowbirds to US for jab

Medical tourism?

Canada's health-care system, long a source of national pride for being more equitable than the U.S., has struggled so hard to deliver COVID vaccines that some of its citizens are heading to Florida to get their jab.

At Century Village East, a retirement community in Deerfield Beach packed with Canadian residents, medics vaccinated 4,000 people over eight days this month. Therese Gagnon, a retired school teacher from Quebec, and her husband got theirs Thursday morning in Fort Lauderdale. Like other Canadians, she took advantage of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's policy of vaccinating anyone 65 or older — regardless of their nationality or where they live.

"Canadian authorities should come see how it is so efficiently administered," said Gagnon, 70, who spends four months a year at a second home in Pompano Beach to escape her country's frigid winter.