Road to vaccination

City reaches goal of delivering second dose to all long-term-care homes,

The city of Toronto will reach the milestone of offering both COVID-19 vaccine doses to all 87 long-term-care homes in the city as of Tuesday.

Ten of those homes are cityrun, and more than 90 per cent of consenting residents in the municipal homes have now received both doses of vaccine, the city said in a press release Monday.

The Moderna and PfizerBioNTech vaccines both require two shots for the recipient to be fully immunized.

That rate of vaccination is a testament to the competence of city-run homes compared to private homes, according to Vivian Stamatopoulos, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University and a long-termcare advocate and researcher.

“This is just another example of how well our public system of long-term care functions compared to the private sector,” Stamatopoulos said.

Stamatopoulos emphasized that although residents and staff in long-term-care homes across Toronto have been offered the vaccine, rates in private homes could be much lower.

Black, Indigenous and otherwise racialized people may be cautious of the vaccine due to a history of medical neglect and abuse, Stamatopoulos said.

“There’s a lot of vaccine hesitancy when there’s not clear information provided,” she said. “We need to have broader public health campaign campaigns.”

Vaccine clinics will continue to operate in city-run homes to ensure more staff, residents and essential caregivers are vaccinated, the release said.

NDP MPP for Scarborough Southwest, Doly Begum, said she’s happy to hear that residents in long-term-care homes are being vaccinated, but said the province must prioritize planning to ensure an equitable distribution.

“I have been asking for an equitable distribution of vaccines here in Scarborough, which is so important because across the province people are not affected the same way,” she said. “We have vulnerable communities, we have essential workers, we have racialized workers who need to have better protection.”

Begum added that doctors and staff she’s spoken with are prepared to vaccinate 1,000 people per day in Scarborough alone.

“People are doing everything possible. Health-care staffs are doing everything possible,” Begum said.

“We just need a government to step up and provide the support and the resources so that we can vaccinate people as fast as possible.”