Toronto, other cities, sitting on vaccine doses - Toronto Sun

Toronto often sees daily vaccine surpluses of 10,000 doses, say sources

Author of the article:

Brian Lilley

Publishing date:

Jun 10, 2021  •  3 hours ago  •  1 minute read  •  27 Comments

Helen Briggs, a pharmacist, holds up a tray of syringes as Lirie Palamind an RPN (background) loads up them up with Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Humber River Hospital clinic held at Downsview Arena on April 21, 2021. Photo by Jack Boland /Toronto Sun

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Local public health units across the province are having trouble keeping up with the number of vaccine doses they are receiving and some, including Toronto, are sitting on big surpluses.

According to multiple sources, this is part of why the province is trying to shift gears in vaccine deployment.

Sources speaking on condition of anonymity say some of the province’s largest public health units are sitting on large reserves of vaccines.

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Toronto, able to vaccinate as many as 31,000 people per day, is often only hitting two-thirds of their capacity — leaving as many as 10,000 surplus doses each day.

Ottawa and Peel Region are also sitting on large surpluses.

The province is now looking to help public health units target hard to reach populations for first doses while ramping up second dose administration.

This includes encouraging greater use of neighbourhood pharmacies for distribution.

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The province’s vaccine task force is also said to be pushing for distributing doses to public health units based on how quickly they would use them rather than by population.

That could see locations like Toronto, Peel and Ottawa get reduced deliveries in the future until they use up the tens of thousands of doses they have on hand.

Ontario has administered at least one dose of a COVID-19 dose to more than 71% of the population 12 and over while about 10% have received two doses.

Ontario, and Canada as a whole, is now well above the United States in single dose administration. American officials are now concerned that they may have hit a plateau in terms of vaccine uptake, something provincial officials don’t think has happened here yet.

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Toronto, other cities, sitting on vaccine doses - Toronto Sun
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