Vaccine rollout shows disparity across city
Jane and Finch, home to many essential workers, has the lowest vaccination rate. Moore Park, an affluent area, has the highest
Two neighbourhoods — two vastly different vaccination rates.
That’s what new data released Tuesday from non-profit ICES, formerly the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, showed when it examined who is receiving the vaccine in Toronto and Peel Region.
The research displayed a clear trend. Wealthier neighbourhoods with lower COVID-19 rates had significantly higher vaccination rates than lower-income neighbourhoods with more risk.
The most vaccinated neighbourhood in Toronto, defined by the first three letters of the postal code, was Moore Park (M4T), an affluent area north of Rosedale near St. Clair and Mount Pleasant Avenues.
There, 22.4 per cent of residents had received at least one shot, despite the rate of hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 being just 0.59 per 1,000 people.
Jane and Finch (M3N), where more than half of the residents do not speak English as a first language, and where thousands of essential workers live, had the lowest vaccination rate.
Only 5.5 per cent of people there were vaccinated. That neighbourhood also has a rate of 5.06 per 1,000 people for hospitalization and death due to COVID-19.
Community advocates and physicians told the Star they were alarmed by the stark disparity in vaccine distribution. It shows clear inequities in the vaccine rollout so far, Dr. Andrew Boozary, executive director of social medicine at University Health Network said in an interview.
On Wednesday, the province announced their vaccine strategy would now be aimed at hot spot neighbourhoods across the province. That news came more than a year into the pandemic.
Data from Toronto Public Health shows 68 per cent of workplace outbreaks come from offices, warehouses, construction sites and food processing plants, the Star recently reported.
Last summer, data from the city also showed that 80 per cent of COVID-19 cases were among people of colour and that cases were consistently high in the northwest corner of Toronto.
The Star visited both Moore Park and Jane and Finch to see how the vaccination rollout has unfolded.
Jane and Finch
Andrew Do felt at home growing up in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood. As the child of refugees from Vietnam, the home-cooked lunches he brought to school were easily accepted by others. His peers were children of immigrants, too, and there was a strong sense of comfort in that.
“People there feel a very immense pride from living where they are,” said Do, a 31-year-old service worker. “But that pride also comes from the fact that they are looked down upon.”
Jane and Finch has long been unfairly stigmatized and neglected, and that’s compounded by an inequitable rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, health-care experts and community advocates say.
Do’s parents, who are both in their late 50s, have felt this impact directly — they both were diagnosed with COVID-19 this month. They have lived in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood since arriving as refugees in the early 1980s. Do and his brother now live in Cabbagetown.
Do’s father works in a factory where there was a COVID outbreak at the end of March. While his parents don’t want to blame the employer and say they are unsure how they got COVID, Do suspects it was at the factory. The couple did not want to provide their names to the Star due to fears their employer would identify them.
Do’s parents’ vulnerability living in Jane and Finch has increased amid the pandemic, not because of the neighbourhood itself, but due to how the region is treated by governments and the health-care system, said Do.
The vaccination rate is low, despite the neighbourhood being a consistent hot spot for COVID-19. It’s home to thousands of essential workers.
These workers take available jobs often as new immigrants, and as a result live in dense housing, due to the low wages that barely make a dent in Toronto rental prices.
Some wealthier neighbourhoods have received more than four times the number of shots so far, despite far lower rates of COVID-19.
Do’s mother was hospitalized with the virus, and was thankfully discharged Wednesday. Do was terrified she would die.
He tried to convince his dad to quit his factory job, but he refused, saying he didn’t want to burden his sons with his expenses.
“My dad believes in the inherent dignity of working very, very hard,” he said.
Do says his father wants his sons to have a more secure life than he and his wife do, and not to have to worry about more bills.
Now, Do has been trying to help his dad from afar to get in his application for the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit, a fund that is applied retroactively if someone gets sick due to COVID-19. His father’s job doesn’t provide sick days.
On April 3, the city announced it’s launching a campaign in multiple languages to help provide more information on how to get vaccinated.
Those living in the northwest region of the city, including Jane and Finch, have faced health disparities, racism and a historical lack of social support — which is why it’s been a COVID-19 hot spot in the first place, Vhil Castillejos, manager of community well-being at Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, told the Star.
In 2015, a report by multiple community associations in the neighbourhood along with researchers from York and Ryerson universities, explained that Jane and Finch has experienced a “significant lack of sustained funding” or “any kind of cultural strategy” since the 1980s.
Toronto announced Wednesday that it aims to target 111 priority neighbourhoods in the city for vaccination and is planning to take vaccines to essential workers so they have easier access. The province also announced it is prioritizing hot spots.
With these new strategies, there are hopes more will get the vaccine in priority areas like Jane and Finch. But uptake has been slow so far, said Jeremy Huang, a pharmacist at the Shoppers Drug Mart on the corner of Jane and Finch. People weren’t aware they had the shots, he said.
Getting to that pharmacy involves sitting in traffic due to construction that has ripped up the entire intersection, or dodging bumps in the road while navigating on foot. Residents have to wait for the bus in the middle of the street.
The area had been previously called a “vaccine desert” due to the lack of pharmacies allowed to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people 55 and up. Recently, at least 50 more pharmacies were added to the list in Toronto, including several in the northwest.
There are no signs in the area indicating that the Shoppers is providing the vaccine. Huang said, through word of mouth, more are realizing the pharmacy is now providing shots and more are booking appointments.
Do has booked vaccine appointments for his parents, and is used to wading through Canadian bureaucracy for them, as are many children of Jane and Finch residents, he said.
“Jane and Finch is a very heavily immigrant-dominated neighbourhood. I don’t know if my parents would have been able to book their vaccine appointment if it were not me looking for it,” he said.
“This experience of kids doing things for their parents is something many immigrant families have to deal with,” he said. Those complaining about the multitude of websites and signup forms they have to wade through for a vaccine appointment are getting a small taste of what immigrant families have always faced, he explained.
His parents would never want to be seen as complaining and do not want to accuse their employer of creating an unsafe work environment. But the stress of trying to get them help and care in Toronto has left him feeling resentful of the province and the city, for not placing neighbourhoods like Jane and Finch first with the vaccine rollout from the start.
Do knows his parents and many in the neighbourhood want the vaccine as soon as possible, but many are not even used to going to the doctor and don’t feel comfortable with the health-care system. Booking a vaccine is a whole step above that.
“I feel that people can self-service themselves in Moore Park. In Jane and Finch, I don’t know if my parents have ever been able to self-service. Many things are not in English,” he said.
Moore Park
On a sunny spring afternoon, steps from St. Clair subway station, on the other side of the city, Manal Kelada had just finished giving an AstraZeneca shot to a customer inside Ava Pharmacy.
It’s been busy, she said, from behind a sheet of protective plastic — especially when her small independent pharmacy got the COVID vaccine doses that were set to expire at the beginning of April.
“At that time I had to hire people,” she said, adding they were doing maybe 60 shots a day.
She’s now offering vaccines by appointment to cut down on the number of people inside the space during the provincial stay-at-home order.
Still, “the telephone doesn’t stop ringing.”
It’s a vaccine spring for the neighbourhood, just north of Rosedale and south of Davisville Village, which backs up onto Mount Pleasant cemetery and encompasses both Moore Park and some of Deer Park.
Everywhere, it seemed, people were talking about them.
Yonge and St. Clair was busy at midday with construction on new office towers, dog walkers and sporty seniors coming out of the the Badminton & Racquet Club of Toronto, dressed in their whites.
A man was overheard on his cellphone announcing that “Brian and his partner all got vaccinated.” One neighbour congratulated another on getting his shot.
The Star stopped half-a-dozen people who seemed old enough to be eligible, all had already received their vaccines, at four different locations.
Just a short walk from Ava’s pharmacy, a Rexall in the basement of a gleaming office tower is also offering vaccines to people 55 and up, as is a Shoppers Drug Mart nearby.
But there are other choices. Margot Powell, 85 and “still kicking,” was taking a break on a Ravine Bench, an angular, yet comfortable wooden resting spot, near Yonge and St. Clair. Yes, she got the vaccine, and it was “fantastic.”
She got hers at St. Michael’s Hospital downtown after her family doctor called her to tell her she could book an appointment.
Moragh Kusy, 77, who was waiting in line to pick up books at the Deer Park library in a KN95 mask, got hers at Toronto Western about 10 days ago.
She had to put some effort into making the appointment with “so many different sites.”
But she, too, used the word “fantastic” to describe the process once she got there, despite having to wait on hold for 2-⁄2
1 hours to book by phone.
Jane Vining, 70, got her vaccine at Sunnybrook Hospital this month.
Vining heard that Moore Park had the highest vaccination rate in the city and joked to her partner that “it’s because we’re all old.” The neighbourhood does have an older average age than Jane and Finch.
But, even older people there are less vaccinated.
In Jane and Finch, 41 per cent of residents 80 and up have received at least one dose. In the 70-79 age group, just 12.2 per cent of residents have received at least one dose.
In Moore Park, meanwhile, 77 per cent of the neighbourhood population 80 and up have had at least one dose, and just over half of those in their 60s and 70s.
Vining says people in Moore Park are well-educated and traditional. “We believe in science,” she said.
It’s also very central, just a short drive to Sunnybrook or downtown hospitals. Helpful City of Toronto signs in the subway tell riders which bus to catch to get to the nearest mass vaccination centre, at East York Town Centre.
But, judging by the number of cars lining quiet residential streets in the neighbourhood, such as Harper Avenue, a ride isn’t a problem for most.
One four-bedroom brick Georgian revival home there is listed at $2.8 million.
Many homeowners were getting work done on their homes, Wednesday, with roofers, painters, and gardeners some of the only people out.
The peaceful side street seemed far removed from the city, but it’s an easy walk to Yonge and St. Clair, and an even shorter drive.
Back at the pharmacy there, Kelada said some seniors prefer to come to her, even though hospital clinics are available, just because “it’s more convenient.”
People are well-educated and engaged, she said, and do their own research. “They want it now. They don’t want to wait.”