Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government will reveal new legislation Thursday for the province's long-term care homes, where COVID-19 outbreaks have to date killed more than 3,800 people during the pandemic. Advocates say it's an opportunity to really transform a failing system.
TORONTO Ontario’s official opposition is calling on the Progressive Conservative government to provide rules for distributing leftover doses of the COVID-19 vaccine amid reported incidents of queue jumping. Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Andrea Horwath said the government should mandate exactly who should be eligible for any leftover doses of the vaccine available at the end of the day. “I mean that should be very crystal clear,” she said. “We think we should be requiring… vaccination teams to have an actual plan for the eventuality that they may have leftover doses at the end of a vaccination blitz.”
Villa Leonardo Gambin
Villa Leonardo Gambin facing questions over Moderna vaccine doses, which are only usable for six hours after vial is opened.
A nurse at a GTA long-term-care home hit hard by COVID-19 is speaking out after she says she was tasked with giving vaccine doses to the chair of the board and a handful of friends and family of management who had been called in because there was no other plan for a vial set to expire.
Villa Leonardo Gambin, an independent not-for-profit, long-term-care home in Woodbridge, received a shipment of Moderna vaccines in the second week of January, with shots earmarked for residents, staff and essential caregivers, meaning family members who helped with a resident s care.
A long-term care home in Vaughan says it gave some of its precious COVID-19 vaccine doses to non-frontline staff and relatives of board members last month, prompting a nurse ordered to administer the shots to complain to their union.
Despite Ontario's overall downward trend in new COVID-19 cases, sharp regional differences in the rates of transmission make it unlikely that the Ford government will lift public health restrictions uniformly across the province in the coming week.