All Toronto LTC homes vaccinated against COVID-19, health minister says

Ontario’s health minister says all long-term care residents in Toronto’s 87 homes have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Christine Elliott made the announcement on Twitter, saying the vaccinations happened a week before their goal of Jan. 21.

The Ford government had said it had hoped to safely vaccinate all residents, health care workers, and essential caregivers at long-term care homes in the priority regions of Toronto, Peel, York, and Windsor-Essex by Jan. 21.

Another exciting milestone in our vaccine rollout: all long-term care homes in Toronto have been vaccinated, almost a week earlier than our goal of January 21st. Thank you to #TeamVaccine for expediting this important work to protect our most vulnerable and frontline heroes. https://t.co/XErom6WNvB

— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) January 15, 2021

A second dose will be necessary following this date as both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require multiple shots. The interval between Moderna doses is 28 days; for the Pfizer vaccine, it’s 21 days.

Toronto long-term care homes have been hit hard by the second wave of the pandemic especially Scarborough’s Tendercare Living Centre where 73 residents have died and the St. George Community Care home in the Annex where 97 of the 140 residents have had COVID-19, of which 14 have died.

RELATED: Vaccine arrival at Tendercare LC too little, too late for some families

On Wednesday, the province said it remains focused and committed to vaccinating health-care workers and those in long-term care facilities but that people over the age of 80 will be the first priority group to receive the shot when Ontario enters the second phase of its vaccine rollout in April.

As of Jan. 15, Ontario has administered more than 174,630 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Those eligible to be vaccinated as part of Phase 2 of Ontario’s vaccine rollout include:

• Older adults, beginning with those 80 years of age and older and decreasing in five-year increments over the course of the vaccine rollout;
• Individuals living and working in high-risk congregate settings;
• Frontline essential workers (e.g., first responders, teachers, food processing industry); and
• Individuals with high-risk chronic conditions and their caregivers.

From April to June, officials project to secure and distribute roughly 15 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna’s treatment. Of that tally, around 4.5 million will be administered to essential workers, and the aforementioned age demographic above 80 years old.