Vaccine rollout continues in region

REGIONAL — Last Friday, the province announced that they were moving down to the next level of vaccinations, with those residents 75 and over now eligible to get a vaccine at mass vaccination clinics.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and Chatham-Kent Public Health both followed suit with their own announcements.

In the case of Chatham-Kent, they had already been vaccinating the 75-plus crowd last week.

In the case of Windsor-Essex, they were finishing up the 80-plus group and have now moved on to the 75-plus group.

In last week’s Sun, the health units were asking residents to book through their local online portals, but that changed with the announcement from the province.

Effective this past Saturday, the pre-registration form on the Windsor-Essex website was closed and residents were asked to book through the provincial website.

Anyone born in 1946 or earlier is now asked to go to ontario.ca/book-vaccine to book an appointment at one of the local vaccination clinics.

In Chatham-Kent, that site is at the John D. Bradley Centre.

In Windsor-Essex, four sites are now operational, including the WFCU Centre in Windsor, as well as St. Clair College and the Windsor Hall downtown. In the county, the Nature Fresh Farms Recreation Complex in Leamington is currently the only site. It is expected that the Libro Centre in Amherstburg will be up and running soon.

Along with the announcement, the province also announced that anyone born in 1961 and earlier can now participate in the AstraZeneca rollout at select pharmacies.

Windsor-Essex had already begun a pilot project on March 12, where 57 pharmacies across the region were administering AstraZeneca vaccines to those between the ages of 60 and 64.

All regions across Ontario are expected to join the pharmacy stream this week, which opens up opportunities for anyone 60 and over to get vaccinated at their local pharmacy.

The military commander in charge of Canada’s vaccine rollout made an announcement on the weekend that should come as good news for anyone wanting a COVID vaccine.

Major-General Dany Fortin says that there will be enough vaccine supply to get a first dose into the arms of every Canadian adult by Canada Day.

In the meantime, health units and the province are cautioning that until those vaccines are in those arms, we need to maintain physical distancing, wash and sanitize our hands, limit contacts with people outside of our circle, wear a mask in public indoor places and stay home if we don’t feel well.

A third wave of COVID-19 cases has hit certain areas of Ontario and, although this region has fared well in the past few weeks, it’s expected that variants of concern will eventually reach the area, which will spike case counts, hospitalization and deaths.