THUNDER BAY – Canada’s health minister says vaccines are almost certainly having an impact on Thunder Bay’s plummeting COVID-19 numbers.
The good news is that the public seems to be anxious to get vaccinated, evidenced by how quickly spots in the city fill up when announced by the Thunder Bay District Health Unit or one of its partner agencies.
The bad news is the roll-out in the provinces isn’t the same across the board. But it’s getting there, Patty Hajdu said.
The health minister, also the Liberal MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, said she plans to closely watch that vaccines are being used in a timely fashion after being delivered to the provinces and territories and plans to post weekly figures showing how many vaccines have been delivered and how many have been administered on a province-by-province and territory-by-territory basis.
“I think this is something Canadians want to know. They want to know how efficiently vaccines are getting out the door, and they are also curious when it will be their turn,” Hajdu said in a Zoom interview with Dougall Media on Thursday.
Hajdu, who toured the health unit’s vaccine clinic at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition grounds on Wednesday, before Ontario’s latest stay-at-home order went into effect, said she’s aware there have been complaints about the booking process at the provincial level.
She said from her standpoint Ontario’s appointment of a new vaccine lead, combined with the federal government’s promise to step up to help the province get vaccines into people’s arms, should make the process that much smoother moving forward.
“We have actually helped in ways they have identified,” Hajdu said, “for example, vaccinating people in remote northern communities. We partnered with the province to send remote Canadian rangers to work with Nishnawbe Aski Nation, for example, to get into communities that are remote, so that we could get people to vaccinate in hard-to-reach communities.
“We’ll continue to offer that support.”
According to the COVID-19 Tracker website, 4.03 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been delivered to Ontario, with 2.83 million having been administered.
Last Friday the Thunder Bay District Health Unit said at that point, 22.6 per cent of eligible residents in the district had been vaccinated, a number that continues to grow daily. Both the health unit and Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre are capable of vaccinating upward of 500 people per day, with other targeted clinics also filling in some gaps.
On Thursday, pharmacies in Thunder Bay began administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people aged 55 to 64.
Hajdu urged the public to be patient. More than 10.5 million vaccines have been delivered country-wide, with more than 7.2 million doses administered and more than 17 per cent of the country having at least one dose.
“The challenge is, there’s a high degree of desire to get vaccinated, which is a good challenge to have. People want to get their vaccines ... It means people understand the important tool that vaccination plays in stopping the spread,” Hajdu said.
