The chair of the provincial COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force promises Ontario won't take any more days off when it comes to vaccinating the public.
Retired General Rick Hillier provided an update on the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out Tuesday morning and said all the vaccine clinics are now open and will resume at full capacity. The General also said the current 19 vaccination sites across the province will be expanded to 23.
His comments follow heavy public criticism because vaccine clinics in Ontario were closed during Christmas Day and Boxing Day with the province noting that health care staff were exhausted from the pandemic and deserved some time off. Some vaccine sites also had reduced staff during the holidays and couldn't operate at full capacity.
Hillier said right now, there aren't enough vaccines to go around and the province is still waiting for more. He said Tuesday morning that Ontario will now resume vaccinations at full capacity and apologized for closing the vaccine clinics.
"In hindsight it was the wrong decision," he said. "We heard loudly from people over the last 36 hours. We will not take any more days off until we win this war."
The General said he expects 53,000 doses of the newly approved Moderna vaccine to come in on Wednesday. That vaccine will be administered to long term care residents as opposed to the Pfizer vaccine, which has been mainly distributed at hospitals to health care workers.
Hillier said said 14,000 Ontarians have already been vaccinated, adding that the goal of the three phase vaccine rollout is to have 8.5 million Ontarians vaccinated by the end of Phase 2 in July 2021. He added Ontario expects 1.1 million vaccine doses by March. He also expects 50,000 more doses of the Pfizer vaccine in January, adding to the 95,000 of those doses already received.
"We are doing this as fast as we can," said Hillier.
Hillier added he expects one million health care workers and long term care residents to be vaccinated by the end of Phase 1 at the end of March. He told reporters he also anticipates five million doses each month in April, May, and June.
There is also a shift in operations. Hillier said the province will no longer reserve vaccines for the second dose and is asking Health Canada if it's possible only one dose of the Moderna vaccine will be effective instead of the two recommended doses. He is also asking Health Canada to get the vaccines out faster.
"We want to get this right," Hillier said.
