Ontario education and child-care staff can get the COVID-19 vaccine at 10 more clinics

The Ontario government has made slots available at 10 additional COVID-19 vaccine clinics specifically for education and child-care workers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

Eligible individuals will be able to book an appointment at one of these locations starting Jan. 8. The clinics are located in Toronto, Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Vaughan, Pickering, Hamilton, Oakville and Brampton.

Appointments can be made through a new website operated by FH Health, whose company website says it offers testing and screening for businesses and communities.

In a statement, Education Minister Stephen Lecce said the government hopes the additional vaccine slots will enable students to return to the classroom on Jan. 17.

“As we work to get children back to class, we are taking swift action to establish additional clinics – open seven days a week – that will provide further protection for Ontario’s school communities,” he said.

The Ontario government initially said that students would return to the classrooms on Jan. 5, a two-day delay in order to allow schools time to deploy additional safety measures and provide N95 masks for staff.

Four days later, Premier Doug Ford announced that students would not be returning until Jan. 17 due to a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases.

There was no mention of dedicated vaccine clinics for education and child-care workers until Jan. 6, when the province announced that it would set aside a number of appointments at the International Centre in Mississauga. The appointments would be made available to individuals between the hours of 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. seven days a week.

The City of Toronto also confirmed Thursday that they would dedicate 3,500 vaccination appointments for education workers at two city-run immunization clinics on both January 9 and January 16.

Toronto Mayor John Tory said that school boards have been asked to work with the city to schedule employees to get their shots on those days. Family members of education staff will also be eligible.

“Team Toronto is doing everything it can and will do everything that it can to help the school boards and the province to safely return to in-person learning in our schools in two weeks,” Tory said at the time, adding that the city is also making 8,500 additional appointments available to the general public this weekend.

Here are the locations of the 11 clinics where spots are being held for education and child-care workers: