Toronto will allow people over the age of 70 to book an appointment to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at a city-run clinic as of tomorrow.
Mayor John Tory announced the change on Friday afternoon as he revealed that there are 30,000 vaccination appointments still available at city-run clinics next week.
“If you are eligible please sign up. That is the most useful contribution you can make on the fronts lines. Not in months or in weeks but now,” Tory said. “This is a battle that we must win and it is a battle that we will win but we need your help signing up and persuading others to sign up and we need that help now.”
A number of other public health units have already begun administering vaccines to adults aged 70 and up but in Toronto appointments had only been available to those above the age of 75 until now.
The decision to widen the list of people eligible for the vaccine comes as the city gets set to open an additional two mass vaccination clinics on Monday, brining its total number to five.
A sixth city-operated clinic at The Hangar in North York will then open on April 5.
“We are continuing to ramp up our clinic capacity. We are vaccinating thousands a day but we now have the capacity for more and we need you to use that capacity,” Tory said. “In our original three clinics we were previously able to vaccinate 1,350 per day. Starting Monday we will be able to vaccinate 6,300 people per day.”
COVID-19 vaccination appointments have regularly been booked up across the GTA as they have become available but the city is now having trouble filling some appointments, following a recent increase in supply.
At Toronto’s largest vaccination clinic at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, only about 68 per cent of the 1,170 available appointments for the day had been spoken for by earlier on Friday morning, raising the spectre that some could go unfilled at a time that COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are surging.
Tory told reporters that it is possible that there are “people who aren’t aware of the increase in capacity” that has made it easier for residents to receive their shots.
He said that in widening the list of people eligible for the vaccine at Toronto clinics, the city has made a “significant move” that will likely lead to increased bookings.
But he said that he is also calling on residents to do their part by signing up themselves or making sure their loved ones do.
“We are in a marathon race between the virus and vaccines. It is one that vaccines must win and key to that is your willingness to sign up now to get vaccinated,” he said.
Ontario has administered more than 1.7 million individual doses of COVID-19 vaccine to date, including more than 436,000 doses in Toronto.
The second phase of its vaccine rollout begins next week and will see the list of eligible recipients expanded to include some essential workers and people with select pre-existing conditions.
