Ontario will offer booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine to those 70 and older, health care workers, and others starting this weekend, with the government saying all residents 12 and over will be eligible in the coming months.
The following groups will be eligible as of 8 a.m. on Saturday, though they must wait to book a booster shot appointment until six months after their most recent COVID-19 vaccine dose:
- Individuals aged 70 and over (born in 1951 or earlier);
- Health care workers and designated essential caregivers in congregate settings (including long-term care home and retirement home staff and designated caregivers);
- Individuals who received a complete series of a viral vector vaccine (two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine or one dose of the Janssen vaccine); and
- First Nation, Inuit and Métis adults and their non-Indigenous household members.
Eligible individuals will be able to book through the provincial portal or directly through health units that use their own vaccine booking system, Indigenous-led vaccination clinics, and select pharmacies, said Ontario's chief medical officer of health Dr. Kieran Moore at a press conference Wednesday.
The Thunder Bay District Health Unit said it would provide information later this week on how eligible individuals can book booster shots.
The province will also launch Operation Remote Immunity 3.0 to deliver booster shots in northern fly-in communities, with support from Ornge, Moore said.
The province had already approved booster shots for high-risk groups like those who are immunocompromised or live in long-term care homes in August. It has so far administered about 150,000 booster shots to those groups.
As of Saturday, an estimated 2.75 million people will be eligible for booster shots in the province.
The government also announced plans to gradually roll out eligibility for booster shots to all residents 12 and older “over the coming months.”
The decision comes despite a lack of evidence that most people’s immunity will begin waning after vaccination, Moore suggested.
“There is no sudden drop-off we’ve seen in any of our data,” he said. “We do see a slow and gradual waning in immunity in those specific populations we’ve already addressed… In the general population, we’re not seeing that at present.”
Global health leaders have raised concerns over the move to widely offer booster shots.
World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in an op-ed in August it was “unconscionable” for rich countries to start offering booster shots to the general population, while billions are still without access to a first shot in poorer countries.
The WHO has more recently supported booster shots for the immunocompromised.
Two shots will still be all that's needed to qualify as "fully vaccinated" for the purposes of the provincial vaccine certificate, Moore said, at least for the foreseeable future.
“Two doses will be acceptable to get you into any of the venues that currently have any restrictions," he said Wednesday.
However, he said he could envision that changing in the future, depending on the data on immune response to the vaccines. COVID will “most likely” become an annual winter virus like other coronaviruses, potentially requiring regular vaccination to keep up with mutations, he said.
Ontario is also working with public health units across the province to prepare to vaccinate children aged 5 to 11, as Health Canada considers an application for approval of a Pfizer formulation for that younger group, recently approved in the U.S.
