'Absolutely incredible': Premier Doug Ford tours Newmarket COVID-19 vaccination centre

Centre run by Southlake hospital vaccinating front-line workers now, general public in future

Yorkregion.com
Jan. 28, 2021
Lisa Queen

Premier Doug Ford toured the COVID-19 vaccination centre at Newmarket’s Ray Twinney Recreation Complex on the afternoon of Jan. 27 as long-term care workers, essential caregivers and hospital workers received their second doses of vaccines against the virus.

"To see this mass vaccination centre, it’s absolutely incredible," Ford said after he toured the facility.

"What’s so impressive is how quickly they put it together and how everyone just banded together, no matter if it’s Southlake, the paramedics, public health, everyone just banded together and made it happen. That’s the true Ontario spirit. I just have so much admiration for the folks out there."

Deputy Premier and Health Minister Christine Elliott, who is also the MPP for Newmarket-Aurora, retired Canadian Armed Forces General Rick Hillier, who is now chair of COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force, and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones joined Ford on the tour, led by Southlake Regional Health Centre CEO Arden Krystal.

The vaccination centre on the hockey rink is now being used to vaccinate front-line workers and essential caregivers, but will be used in the future to vaccinate the general public.

The centre has the potential to vaccinate up to 4,000 people per day and up to 8,000 if a second rink is added. It can also serve as a model for other communities when mass vaccinations begin.

Asked when the vaccinations for the general public will start, given delays in the availability of the vaccine -- in early January, Pfizer revealed that it would slash the doses it is shipping to Canada over four weeks as it retools its Belgium plant manufacturing the drug -- Ford said he is hoping that will start in the spring.

"We’re pushing the federal government and I know they’re working hard as well to get more vaccines," he said.

"The mass vaccinations, we’re hoping in April, May, June, depending on the amount that we get."