OTTAWA Retired General Rick Hillier says the idea that a majority of COVID-19 vaccines in Ontario are sitting in freezers is incorrect and that the province has the opposite problem. The information is misleading. We re actually going to run out of vaccines, Hillier told CTV Morning Live in Ottawa on Wednesday. Yesterday, we vaccinated more than 10,000 people in the province of Ontario. We will do the same and more again today. We are at the point now where we will start running out of vaccines as the people who need the second shot start coming back, he said. The retired Canadian Armed Forces General is leading Ontario s vaccine distribution task force. He suggested on Tuesday that holding back 35,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine contributed to the slow roll out, and acknowledged that pausing vaccinations during Christmas was a mistake.
TORONTO News that Canada is behind other countries in their COVID-19 vaccination rollout schemes while in a critical point in the pandemic has experts worried the country wonât meet the September 2021 vaccination goal set by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The vast geography of the country, including remote communities where the logistics of flying in healthcare is complicated âas well as tricky storage requirements of the Pfizer vaccine, were initially pointed out as roadblocks to the rollout. But with the arrival of Modernaâs easier-to-store vaccine, and Health Canada reviewing more vaccine products on the horizon, experts say governments need to shift focus.
Ontario’s minister of long-term care is conceding that there have been some communications failures as COVID-19 spread in homes and staff had to focus solely on protecting residents at the expense of keeping family members in the loop.
Published Tuesday, December 29, 2020 3:57PM EST Last Updated Wednesday, December 30, 2020 5:03AM EST Ontario’s minister of long-term care is conceding that there have been some communications failures as COVID-19 spread in homes and staff had to focus solely on protecting residents at the expense of keeping family members in the loop. But Dr. Merrilee Fullerton is defending her government’s handling of the pandemic overall, telling CP24 that it has brought “every measure and every tool” to the table in an effort to protect our most vulnerable from a “terrible virus” that has now claimed the life of 2,688 residents in long-term care homes.
TORONTO Opposition critics are slamming the Ford government over a scaled-back COVID-19 vaccination schedule over the holidays. While the province has received around 90,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this month, only a small fraction of those doses have been administered so far. Doses of the newly approved Moderna vaccine also began arriving in the province last week. Provincial officials had said Ontario was expected to receive about 53,000 doses of that vaccine by the end of December. But according to the province, just 13,200 vaccine doses have been administered as of 4 p.m. Monday. Most vaccination clinics were open with shortened hours on Dec. 24. All clinics were then closed on Dec. 25 and Dec. 26. Just five hospitals ran clinics on Sunday, while 10 were operating Monday. All 19 of them are expected to reopen on Tuesday.