TORONTO

Nearly 100 Toronto pharmacies to receive promised AstraZeneca vaccines Thursday

Chris Fox CP24.com and CTV News Toronto Managing Digital Producer

Published Thursday, May 27, 2021 11:48AM EDT

Pharmacist Barbara Violo arranges all the empty vials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines that she has provided to customers at the Junction Chemist which is a independent pharmacy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, on Monday, April 19, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Text:

TORONTO -- Nearly 100 Toronto pharmacies will receive limited supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine today, just four days ahead of their expiry.

Individuals who received their first dose of the vaccine between March 10 and March 19 were made eligible to receive an early second dose on Tuesday as the province scrambled to use up 31,000 doses that are set to expire on May 31.

However, the delivery of the vaccine to most Toronto pharmacies has been delayed due to a quality assurance process that has been put in place to ensure the vials didn’t spoil while sitting in refrigerators over the last two weeks.

On Thursday morning, Ontario Pharmacists Association CEO Justin Bates confirmed to CP24 that 99 Toronto pharmacies will be receiving a combined 12,000 combined doses today with more shipments expected tomorrow.

He said that pharmacists are committed to getting the doses into people’s arms as quickly as possible but “are running out of runway” to use them all up before they expire.

“Our pharmacists are in a very awkward position because they've got lots of people coming in and they're asking about booking appointments and getting the vaccine, which is completely understandable. However, they have no information to provide the people, and they don't know when they're going to get these vaccines,” he said. “They can't plan resources appropriately in terms of bringing in extra staff to help and they're going to have to really move mountains to be able to get these vaccines in arms between now and Monday. It's only four days.”

The Ford government needed to move up second doses for a small cohort of people after temporarily pausing the use of AstraZeneca due to concerns over a risk of rare but potentially fatal blood clots.

The rollout, however, has been turbulent with many people taking to social media to complain about a lack of clarity about how to get an appointment.

“Pharmacists across the province, particularly in Toronto are going to do everything they can to accommodate people and to make this work because we have a shared objective of not wasting any doses,” Bates said Thursday. “You know I can't guarantee that doses won’t be wasted based on the timelines but we are committed to doing this very quickly. We are going to mobilize and we'll get the shots in arms.”

The Ontario government has said that it expects to receive another 254,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in about two weeks’ time.

It has not yet indicated who will be eligible to receive those vaccines.