The province is taking a three-phase approach as it prepares to roll out the COVID-19 vaccine.
Chair of the COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force Retired General Rick Hillier says the first phase will start immediately with the government concentrating on the most vulnerable, including long-term care homes, retirement homes and the staff who provide care to these groups.
He indicates the priority could be residents and staff in long-term care homes in areas that are in lockdown or under the Red level of the province’s framework.
“Phase 1 will take us two to three months, depending on the arrival of those vaccines,” Hillier says. “We won’t be able to do everyone each day or on the first day. So people are going to have to be patient, that their turn will come in that Phase 1 category.”
Groups receiving the early vaccine in Ontario will include:
-Residents, staff, essential caregivers, and other employees of congregate living settings (e.g., long-term care homes and retirement homes) that provide care for seniors as they are at higher risk of infection and serious illness from COVID-19
-Health care workers, including hospital employees, other staff who work or study in hospitals, and other health care personnel
-Adults in Indigenous communities, including remote communities where risk of transmission is high
-Adult recipients of chronic home health care.
Hillier notes it’s not yet known if the government can go directly into these settings or if they will just set up vaccination sites.
He says they are still learning more about the vaccines, including the first anticipated shipment of the Pfizer vaccine.
Hillier says Phase 2, will start around the beginning of April and take between six and nine months.
“That’s when the bulk of the vaccines will start to arrive, other than Pfizer, and we will start and we will ask Cabinet for recommendations as to the priorities beyond [that],” he says.
Hillier calls the third phase a “steady state”.
“That’s when we want to turn the operation into one which is identical to the flu vaccine or the shingles vaccine, where your pharmacies, your medical clinics, your provincial health units, are the places you would go,” he explains.
He notes he expects the vaccines shortly and is anticipating about 85,000 doses to start.
Because two doses of the vaccine are needed, roughly 42,000 people will be able to get it at the beginning.
