Toronto shifting focus to mobile, pop-up vaccine clinics

Exterior view of one of Toronto's mass COVID-19 vaccination sites located at the Hangar. CITYNEWS

By Michael Ranger

Posted July 28, 2021 5:58 am.

Last Updated July 28, 2021 12:05 pm.

Toronto officials held their last scheduled COVID-19 media briefing on Wednesday.

Mayor John Tory, Dr. Eileen de Villa and Chief Matthew Pegg provided the update from city hall and discussed the city’s vaccine rollout moving forward – now that the majority of residents are fully vaccinated.

The city announced that five of the nine city-run mass vaccination clinics will be shutting down on Aug. 22, with the focus and resources shifting towards mobile and pop-up clinics that can reach areas of the city where vaccination rates are lagging.

“We will begin to scale down a number of our city-operated vaccine clinics in order to enable an increased focus on hyper-local mobile vaccine team deployments,” said Chief Matthew Pegg.

Starting on Aug. 23, Toronto Public Health (TPH) will redeploy around 700 staff members from the mass clinics. The redeployment will allow for the addition of 17 mobile clinic teams that will be able to administer doses across the city. Toronto currently has five mobile vaccine teams in operation.

“As clinic turnout diminishes, this will mean the shifting of hundreds of staff from some of our city-run immunization vaccine clinics towards mobile efforts,” said Tory.

“Instead of expecting that they will come to us, we will go to them with the vaccines.”

The city says the changes will give Toronto Public Health more ways to bring vaccines directly to workplaces, faith groups, organizations and communities that are experience barriers to vaccine access.

The following clinics will cease operation by Aug. 22:

Carmine Stefano Community Centre
Malvern Community Recreation Centre
Mitchell Field Arena
North Toronto Memorial Community Centre
Toronto Congress Centre

Anyone who has a first or second dose booked at one of the closing clinics will be contacted about moving their appointment.

The following clinics will continue operation beyond Aug. 22:

Metro Toronto Convention Centre
The Hangar Sport & Event Centre
Cloverdale Mall
Scarborough Town Centre

With more than 80 per cent of Torontonians with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the city is making a push to target neighbourhoods where vaccine rates remain low compared to the rest of the city.

The city says the biggest lag in vaccination rate lies within the 18 to 45 age group and focus is turning to some areas in the city’s northwest where the double vaccination rate is still below 50 per cent.

Tory also announced that certain city buildings, including Toronto City Hall, will begin reopening on Aug. 9.

The Wednesday briefing was the 186th city news conference held on the pandemic situation.

The city says regularly scheduled briefings won’t be held going forward due to low COVID-19 case counts and increasing vaccination rates. It says future briefings will be held on an as-needs basis.

Toronto has seen more than 170,000 COVID-19 cases and 3,604 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Daily new infections peaked at more than 1,400 in early April amid a stretch where the city saw more than 1,000 new cases for more than three straight weeks.

The city has now seen less than 100 new infections every day since June 5.

The overall rate of fully vaccinated Torontonians 12 and up is approaching 75 per cent.

The city has opened up all of its mass vaccination clinics to walk-ins. Anyone 12 years of age and older will be able to walk into any of the city-run clinics and get their first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The walk-in appointments will be available from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. each day.

To date, 4,282,554 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Toronto.

The province reported 37 new cases for Toronto on Tuesday.

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