Waterloo Public Health announces plans to provide 10,000 vaccinations per day

Waterloo Region has released details of its plan to provide up to 10,000 vaccinations per day in the event it gets enough vaccines to reach that mark.

The plan was pieced together by the Waterloo Region vaccine distribution task force, which is headed by Waterloo Regional Police Deputy Chief Shirley Hilton.

“General (Rick) Hillier (who is overseeing Ontario’s vaccine rollout) challenged us to develop a plan to provide up to 10,000 vaccinations a day in our community and this plan will deliver,” Hilton stated.

“There is still a lot of work to do on logistics, staffing, and operational planning but I am very proud of the effort that has gone into developing a community-involved plan to ensure as many eligible people are vaccinated as quickly as possible.”

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The region says the plan follows the Ontario government’s three-phased approach, which sees long-term-care and retirement homes, high-risk medical staff and urban Indigenous people vaccinated in Phase 1, which is already underway.

In Phase 2, the elderly, other hospital personnel, people in congregate settings and essential workers will be vaccinated, while the rest of the population will be vaccinated in Phase 3.

In order to ramp up when able, the plan is to use five types of clinics, including one already established at Grand River Hospital. This will also be used as a vaccine depot and a coaching site. It will be able to vaccinate up to 650 per day.

There will also be mobile vaccine clinics run by various health providers of large employers, which will be able to vaccinate a maximum of 1,100 people per day. It would take a week to ramp up to capacity.

Two large public health clinics run by the region would vaccinate between 2,500 and 4,000 people and would take about four to six weeks to get to maximum capacity.

Up to eight mid-sized clinics could also be used. They would be run at primary care sites and would need a week or two to get up to a maximum vaccination estimate of around 3,600 vaccinations per day.

Finally, there would be smaller sites at locations such as retail pharmacies, which could be up and running in two to three weeks and could provide as many as 2,100 vaccinations in a day.