Quebec has lowered the vaccine eligibility age in Montreal to those 60 and up as pharmacies in the city begin inoculations Monday.
Health authorities announced the change for the Montreal region late Sunday while keeping the age limit at 65 and older for the rest of the province.
Meanwhile, about 350 Montreal-area pharmacies joined the province’s mass vaccination campaign on Monday.
Pharmacies on the island started booking appointments last Monday, with plans to enlarge the program to the rest of the province in the coming weeks.
Benoit Morin, head of the association representing pharmacy owners, says each participating pharmacy has received a first delivery of 100 doses.
The first 100 appointments available at Morin’s own Montreal pharmacy were booked up after only one hour on the government’s Clic Santé registration portal.
Morin told Global News he had to rent a church basement across the street from his location at Sherbrooke and Bossuet streets to accommodate patients.
“We need space, because I’m only allowed to have six customers at the same time in the pharmacy,” he said. “I have to keep people with me after the shot, and I have to talk to them. So I need a little bit more space.”
Morin, however, says he hasn’t had to hire more staff as of yet.
“Since we have only 100 shots, it goes fast so I don’t need more people,” he said. “If we have more vaccines, more days to do it, maybe we’ll need more people.”
Morin says he’s confident new deliveries will allow for more appointments in the near future.
“We’re happy to start and test everything,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll have more doses and more vaccines and maybe in a few weeks everything will be smooth and easygoing.”
In Montreal’s neighbouring regions, the government has targeted March 29 as the first date to make appointments at participating pharmacies, with vaccinations to begin during the week of April 5.
“Hopefully in four weeks, we’ll be 1,500 pharmacies across Quebec who will do that,” Morin said.
He believes all together pharmacies could eventually be giving some 125,000 shots a week.
“We did that during the flu campaign, so we don’t worry,” he said. “Maybe we can do a bit more than that.”
About 11 per cent of Quebec’s population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, with a total of 944,793 shots administered so far.
Quebec officials expect to receive 271,440 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 58,500 doses of Moderna this week but none of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
— With files from Global News’ Mike Armstrong and The Canadian Press
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