Passports fuel spike in vaccine bookings
TORONTO • Ontario’s health minister says COVID-19 vaccine bookings more than doubled on the day the government announced its vaccine certificate system.
Christine Elliott did not provide the exact number, and her spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elliott says on Twitter that nearly half of the people getting vaccinated Thursday were receiving their first dose.
On Wednesday the province announced that Ontarians will have to show proof of inoculation to access some non-essential services, such as theatres, gyms and restaurant dining rooms. The vaccine certificate program, which comes into effect on Sept. 22, exempts Ontarians who cannot receive the shot for medical reasons.
The CEO of Ontario’s medical regulator is urging doctors in the province to be judicious about handing out those exemptions.
Dr. Nancy Whitmore says the college has already heard about requests for baseless medical exemptions, and physicians must not give in.
“Given the level of fatigue we are all feeling — health care workers in particular — we all need to do whatever we can to mitigate any further spread of COVID-19,” said Whitmore, who is also the college’s registrar.
There are few legitimate medical reasons not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, she said.
They include an allergistor immunologist-confirmed severe allergy or anaphylactic reaction to a previous dose of a COVID-19 vaccine or to any of its components, and a diagnosis of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — and pericarditis, inflammation of the sac around the heart, after receiving an MRNA vaccine.
The province’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table released modelling on Wednesday saying if virus transmission isn’t reduced, the fourth wave could see more admissions to intensive care units than the third wave, as early as October.
“Because of the Delta variant and to avoid a lockdown in the fall, vaccination needs to accelerate substantially above 85 per cent of eligible population aged 12+ fully vaccinated and we need to reduce contacts to about 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels until vaccination is high enough to protect the population,” the advisers wrote.
Roughly 83 per cent of Ontarians aged 12 and older have at least one dose, and 76.6 per cent are fully vaccinated.