COVID-19 vaccine not expected until late this month

Health unit providing consent forms to high-priority recipients

COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be made available to residents, staff and essential caregivers at long-term-care homes in Peterborough city and county before the end of the month, according to medical officer of health Dr. Rosana Salvaterra.

Peterborough Public Health has been awaiting the vaccine and has not yet received the deep freezer needed to store them.

With lower rates of the virus compared to most other areas of the province, Peterborough was not a priority region to get the vaccine early in Ontario.

Salvaterra said at the health unit’s weekly update on Wednesday the health unit had been expecting to get the vaccine by the middle of the month, but now it is not expected until the end of the month.

Front-line health-care workers and residents of Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation are also among the groups set by the province as high priorities to receive the vaccine first.

Salvaterra also said that while she didn’t have a date of vaccine delivery as of Wednesday, she already had consent forms prepared for distribution among local people who will receive the vaccine first — people working and living in long-term care, for example.

“So as soon as we get delivery

of vaccine here in Peterborough, we will be immunizing in our long-term care setting,” Salvaterra said.

The Peterborough Public Health website will likely soon be able to report daily on the number of vaccine doses in stock locally and how many local people are immunized daily, she also said.

Women and Gender Equality Minister Maryam Monsef, the MP for Peterborough-Kawartha, took part in the virtual press briefing and said that the federal government has already distributed more than 420,000 vaccines to the provinces and territories to deploy to Canadians.

“And we are on track to have at least 1.2 million doses delivered by the end of this month,” she said, adding that Health Canada is reviewing vaccine approvals for both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

Monsef added that data regarding the vaccine rollout can be followed online on the federal government’s website at bit.ly/394xp6o.