Moderna vaccine doses expected to be injected in Ont. this week

Residents in long-term care will start receiving COVID-19 vaccines within days, and more than half of Ontarians, including some in the general population, are slated to be immunized by midsummer, the head of the province's inoculation campaign said Tuesday.

In an update on Ontario's vaccination plan, retired Gen. Rick Hillier said the province expects to receive roughly 50,000 doses of the Moderna shot on Wednesday, and distribute them to long-term care and retirement homes.

Immunizations should begin at those sites within 48 to 72 hours after the vaccine is received, he said, as the province marked another record high in new daily COVID-19 infections.

Another 50,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine are expected to arrive in Ontario next month, largely earmarked for remote northern and Indigenous communities, he said. The province hopes to have inoculated more than a million health-care workers and people in other vulnerable groups by the end of the first phase of its vaccine rollout, which will last through the winter, he said.

Some 15 million vaccines are set to arrive in Ontario during the spring, and while it has not yet been determined where or to whom they will be administered, about 8.5 million Ontarians should be able to get the shot by midsummer, Hillier said.

“I think we can get to a lot of mainstream Ontario by late July,” he said. “In Phase 2, we will get at a lot of the people in Ontario who don't have underlying conditions, who are not the most vulnerable, who are not most at risk.”

The province said 2,553 new infections were recorded Tuesday — a new daily peak — and 1,939 on Monday. Ontario also reported 37 new deaths on Sunday and 41 more on Monday.