Strip club offers booster to marginalized
Pop-up clinic at Filmore’s targets residents who face difficulties accessing COVID-19 vaccines
Despite the wintry weather, a lineup snaked along Dundas Street East on Monday as hundreds waited to get their COVID-19 booster vaccines inside Filmore’s strip bar before dancers took the stage.
Recorded music played as people doffed their outerwear and rolled up their sleeves to receive either a Moderna or Pfizer booster shot at makeshift vaccine stations. The main stage inside “Toronto’s party place” was converted into an aftercare area.
The low-barrier, pop-up vaccine clinic, the result of a partnership between sex work advocacy organization Maggie’s, Filmore’s Gentleman’s Club and University Health Network, targeted marginalized people who face difficulties accessing vaccines.
They include “folks who maybe can’t navigate the online system, folks that don’t have ID, OHIP cards or even any proof of address or any documentation,” explained Ellie Adekur, one of Maggie’s representatives on-site Monday at the familiar downtown venue, located between Jarvis and Sherbourne Streets.
Adekur added there’s never been a stronger urgency to get shots in the arms, pointing to Ontario setting a new record daily high in COVID-19 cases, topping 10,000 for the first time on the weekend. At the same time, the vaccine rollout plan is leaving “those most marginalized left behind.”
Maggie’s picked Filmore’s in response to derogatory comments about such venues operating during the pandemic, Adekur explained.
In 2020, after COVID-19 outbreaks at an adult entertainment venue, Ontario Premier Doug Ford joked that he felt sorry for the people who had to tell their spouses that they had visited one. “I wouldn’t want to be on the end of that one,” Ford said at the time.
Noting that Maggie’s has been doing public health work in downtown Toronto’s east end since 1986, Adekur said “we chose these venues to push back against the stigma that’s coming from our political leaders but to also highlight the work that we’re already doing to make sure that people have access to safe sex and drug use supplies, public health responses through the pandemic.”
Another such clinic will run next Monday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. at the Zanzibar on Yonge Street.
Toronto physician Andrew Baback Boozary tweeted Monday that Maggie’s and Filmores “have been true leaders throughout — establishing vaccine requirements before it was provincial policy” and “here they are leading again — with a low barrier community vaccine clinic.” Last summer, Filmore’s announced it would deny entry to unvaccinated patrons.
Ontario reported another 9,418 COVID-19 cases on Monday, a slight drop from the 10,412 COVID-19 cases reported on Christmas Day, and 9,826 infections on Boxing Day.
Health minister Christine Elliott tweeted that 90.7 per cent of Ontarians 12 and over have had one dose and 88 per cent have had two doses.
Elliott said there are 480 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the province, and 176 patients in intensive care.
According to Public Health Ontario’s weekly epidemiological survey released on Dec. 24, one fatality has been reported among the province’s Omicron cases. Public Health Ontario did not respond to the Star’s request for details. The epidemiological survey includes information as of Dec. 22.