Six politicians have expressed their outrage at Ontario’s decision to exclude much of lower Hamilton in the recent rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in pharmacies, calling the decision “reckless.”
Hamilton Centre NDP MPP Andrea Horwath and MP Matthew Green, as well as city councillors Jason Farr, Nrinder Nann, Maureen Wilson and Sam Merulla, issued a joint statement calling the move “incomprehensible and irresponsible” and suggesting more risk factors with populations in the lower and inner-city.
“We call on Premier Doug Ford and the Ontario COVID vaccine Distribution Task Force to reconsider their negligence, and supply pharmacies in the lower city Hamilton with vaccines to protect residents,” the leaders said in their statement.
Ontario expanded the program on April 1 from just six public health unit regions to 34, releasing a list of 380 additional pharmacies that would be administering COVID-19 vaccines across the province.
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Twenty-one local Hamilton pharmacies were chosen to administer AstraZeneca to residents 55 and older, but not one of the pharmacies is in Hamilton’s lower city.
Donna Skelly, Conservative MPP for Flamborough-Glanbrook, responded to what she called “misinformation” about the pharmacy rollout, saying that the 21 Hamilton pharmacies that received vaccines are just a start.
“To start, 21 pharmacies in Hamilton are offering the vaccine and gradually expanding to include 69 pharmacies,” Skelly said in her own statement.
The initial pilot project began in early March with pharmacies in Toronto, Kingston and Windsor-Essex chosen for the program to administer AstraZeneca vaccines to those 60 and above.
With the addition of the new locations, Ontario will have 700 pharmacies ready to deliver vaccines and expects to have a total of 1,500 pharmacy vaccine sites by the end of April.
So far, close to 111,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed in Hamilton as of April 5. The clinic at Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) has administered the bulk of the shots, about 53,000. Just under 24,000 have received shots at the St. Joe’s site, 19,000 through the mobile clinics, about 10,000 at the large site at First Ontario, and 5,000 through primary care clinics.
Public health is reporting that 100 per cent of the city’s long-term care residents have received vaccines, 93 per cent of retirement homes, 85 per cent of long-term care staff, 45 per cent in retirement homes, and 23 per cent of essential caregivers.
Public health says 18.7 per cent of the eligible population have received a COVID-19 vaccine shot.
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