Family doctors to vaccinate 4,500 Hamiltonians ages 60 to 64 starting Saturday

Family doctors will vaccinate 4,500 Hamiltonians aged 60 to 64 against COVID starting Saturday.

It's a very limited number of doses," said Dr. Cathy Risdon, lead physician at the McMaster Family Health Team. It's not meant to be covering that (entire) age group."

A number of appointment-only clinics will vaccinate those specifically chosen by the McMaster Family Health Team, the Hamilton Family Health Team and the city's community health centres in partnership with public health.

There is no way to register and residents should not call looking for an appointment.

Please don't call your family doctor," said Dr. Scott Wooder, lead physician for the Hamilton Family Health Team. We are doing it by calling people who are eligible and making appointments. If people start phoning their family doctor, they are just going to overwhelm the lines."

No walk-ins are allowed, so those without an appointment are asked to stay away from the clinics. Concern is so high about the clinics being overrun that their locations aren't being made public.

The last thing we want is 4,000 people standing outside, milling around and spreading this around," said Dr. David Price, chair of the department of family medicine at McMaster University. I just don't want people showing up saying Look, here's my birth certificate, I'm 62-years-old.' They will not be allowed in."

Family doctors will contact those who have been chosen to get vaccinated before the doses expire on April 2.

We will ensure every one of those doses gets into an arm," said Price.

Those at highest risk of getting COVID won't be chosen because it is the AstraZeneca vaccine being given out. Risdon said the province requested those at highest risk get the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines instead.

They look as though they have a higher effectiveness rate especially ... against the variants," said Price. Those at higher risk will be eligible hopefully soon for one of the mRNA vaccines in the mass screening clinics ... as those vaccines start to arrive in higher numbers over the next couple of weeks."

Wooder emphasized for the majority of people in this age group the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective."

In addition, family doctors will prioritize those in the city's highest-risk neighbourhoods in line with the recommendation from Ontario's COVID-19 Science Table.

We won't be able to vaccinate all of our patients in the age group with the amount of vaccine we have," said Wooder. We're targeting neighbourhoods in the (code) red zone."

There is hope more vaccine will become available to continue the rollout in this age group beyond April 2.

We are not sure of the next arrivals of AstraZeneca but you can be sure as soon as we get them ... we'll ... carry on along that same age group until we finish all of those who are eligible," said Rick Hillier, the retired general in charge of Ontario's vaccination task force.

The time between doses of AstraZeneca has been stretched as far as four months in line with other vaccines.

With the quantities of vaccine we are expecting to receive in the next short while, we doubt there will be that many people who will be extended by those four months," said Health Minister Christine Elliott. We will have significant supplies coming in."

Premier Doug Ford announced Wednesday that Hamilton was one of six areas chosen to pilot vaccines given out through primary-care clinics. The others are Toronto, Guelph, Peterborough, Simcoe-Muskoka and Peel.

This is fabulous and I think it's a real vote of confidence ... in the abilities of the folks who are co-ordinating this in Hamilton," said Price. This is really quite something for our community."

Wooder said family doctors give vaccines out every day, so they're a natural choice to take on more of a roll.

People know us and we know them," he said. We have decades-long relationships with them and their families. There's a lot of trust."

Risdon said conversations about Hamilton taking part in the pilot started with the Ministry of Health last week, with an internal agreement reached Friday.

We did a furious amount of planning for the last five days," she said. The exciting thing is it's really the first chance to test drive vaccine administration in primary care ... There's lots of learnings to be had and kinks to to be worked out."

The point of the pilot is to understand how to get family doctors involved.

There's no question that if we only try to do vaccinations in mass immunization clinics, it's going to be a challenge to reach everybody," said Price. This is an initiative to understand the logistics and methodology of getting it out there - what works and what doesn't work."

The province is also testing the vaccine rollout in pharmacies in Toronto, Windsor-Essex, and Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.

Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter covering health for The Spectator. Reach her via email: jfrketich@thespec.com