Three mass vaccination centres in Toronto are set to open their doors on Wednesday.
Posted Mar 17, 2021, 05:25AM EDT
Three mass vaccination centres in Toronto are set to open their doors on Wednesday.
The vaccination clinics have been set up at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Scarborough Town Centre and Toronto Congress Centre.
“We want to open up these sites and keep them running until the job is done,” says Mayor John Tory.” And the job here, in this case, is as many needles in as many as arms as possible for all groups across the city — reminding people that right now we’re dealing with people who have made a reservation, made an appointment, and who are 80 years of age or over.”
“As people see that these clinics are open and sign up, that we will make huge progress on getting the population of the City of Toronto vaccinated, so that we can bring this pandemic to an end,” Tory added.
According to city officials, inside the 55,000 square-foot clinic at the Toronto Congress Centre, teams of up to 10 immunizers at a time will work to vaccinate five people per hour per team.
Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, who is leading Toronto’s emergency response, says each of the three clinics are currently scaled at 450 appointments per day.
“Of course, as we move through the weeks and the vaccine capacity increases, there’s a corresponding increase in our throughput in the clinic, the amount of vaccine we’re able to deliver so that we’ll increase proportionately as we move forward,” said Pegg.
More than 1,300 people are expected to roll up their sleeves on the first day.
Tory says, “I would urge everybody to explore at getting vaccinated. If you have any need for any information, we have lots of it available to people so that they’ll be comfortable doing what everybody should do for themselves, and for the sake of their family, their coworkers, their friends, which is to get vaccinated — this is a very important thing to help us wrestle COVID-19 to the ground for once and for all.”
The mass vaccination clinics will run from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
