COVID-19 Vaccination Planning For Windsor And Essex County
18-12-2020
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) and Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) are coordinating efforts to plan the rollout of initial, limited vaccinations for the COVID-19 virus starting next week.
The plan will see a limited supply of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. Each individual would require two doses of the vaccine. We cannot yet confirm specific numbers of doses we expect to receive and the exact date for initial vaccinations is not confirmed at this time.
The first group the Ontario government is focusing on is employees who work at Long Term Care/Retirement Homes (LTC/RH) (not in outbreak) in Grey - Lockdown/Red - Control regions in the province, like Windsor and Essex County. The individual LTC/RH employees will be independently scheduled for inoculation.
The Pfizer vaccine requires the individuals being inoculated to attend to the site of the vaccine. The movement of the vaccine is not allowed from its initial delivery site. The vaccine must be stored in freezers at -80 degree Celsius until prepared clinically for inoculation.
As more vaccines become available, we (WRH and WECHU) will continue to follow the Government of Ontario's priority list, which focuses on the following four groups of individuals:
- Residents, staff, essential caregivers, and other employees of congregate living settings (e.g., long-term care homes and retirement homes) that provide care for seniors as they are at higher risk of infection and serious illness from COVID-19;
- Health care workers, including hospital employees, other staff who work or study in hospitals, and other health care personnel;
- Adults in Indigenous communities, including remote communities where risk of transmission is high; and
- Adult recipients of chronic home health care.
View more information online about the Government of Ontario's vaccination priority groups.
Both WECHU and WRH continue to finalize Pfizer vaccine logistics of the rollout with the Province of Ontario and will provide more information about additional vaccine supply as those details become available.
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