Toronto opens up 375,000 new COVID-19 vaccine appointments for July

CBC.ca
June 29, 2021

The City of Toronto says it is opening up 375,000 new vaccine appointments over the next three weeks.

Mayor John Tory says 125,000 appointments will be added for the weeks of July 5, 12 and 19, and will be available for booking starting Tuesday at 8 a.m. ET.

The new spots come as more Ontarians became eligible for second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on Monday.

Any residents 18 and older who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines at least 28 days ago, or the AstraZeneca vaccine at least eight weeks ago, can now book their second shots.

In Toronto, any residents ages 12 and older are eligible to book their second doses as of Monday morning, provided they meet the same criteria on when they received their first dose, according to a news release issued Monday.

Meanwhile, hundreds of volunteers administered nearly 27,000 COVID-19 vaccines at a mass clinic in Toronto's Scotiabank Arena on Sunday. The city said the total number of doses administered there is believed to be a new record for most COVID-19 vaccinations given at a single clinic on a single day.

Those vaccines made up nearly half of the 62,897 doses administered in Toronto on Sunday, including 57,825 second doses and 5,072 first doses. It was the largest number of doses ever administered in Toronto on a single day, according to a Monday media release from the city.

Tory was among the 26,771 people who received a vaccine at the "Our Winning Shot" event at the home arena of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors.

At about 5 p.m. ET Sunday, the "Our Winning Shot" clinic surpassed the North American record of 17,003 doses by one clinic in a single day. Previously, Texas held that record with 17,003 shots administered at a drive-thru clinic at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth on April 30, according to a media release from that city.

Toronto's clinic ran late into the evening and offered walk-in appointments for the last several hours.

Adults were given the Moderna vaccine, while adolescents aged 12-17 were given Pfizer.

Tory said some 800 staff and volunteers helped make the day run smoothly.

"I wasn't too hung up on whether we set records or not, but I just thought the notion of having thousands of vaccinations take place on a given day -- at such an important stage with our battle against COVID-19 -- very important," Tory said at a news conference Monday.

40% of Torontonians now fully vaccinated
Toronto also announced Monday that more than 40 per cent of Toronto residents 18 and up have now been fully vaccinated. Some 77 per cent of adults have received their first dose of the vaccine.

The city and its health-care partners are operating a total of 36 vaccine clinics Monday.

Meanwhile, the city reported an additional 216 new COVID-19 cases in Toronto since Friday -- a daily average of 72 new cases.

To date, the city has seen 169,735 cases of the virus, and 3,522 deaths.

This comes as Ontario gets set to move into Step 2 of the government's reopening plan on Wednesday.

Tory says getting people fully vaccinated will be crucial in moving to the next step.

"We want to move to Step 3 as soon as possible."