Vaccine pre-registration to begin 'soon' for 70-plus crowd in Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph

People who are over the age of 70 and who want to pre-register for the COVID-19 vaccine through Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health can't do it yet, but the medical officer of health says it will be available soon.

Dr. Nicola Mercer said the systemcould begin accepting pre-registrations for that age group ina week or two.

"It is our plan that we will have a pre-registration system up for the next phase as soon as it's reasonable," Mercer said. "We just didn't want to confuse people."

She said the health unit expectsto finish pre-registration for seniors over 80 this week, and once that was complete, pre-registration would begin for the next cohort.

Mercer, who appeared before Guelph city councillors on Monday to give an update, also said because of the large number of people in the 70 years and older group, people should expect the health unit to go slowly at first.

She noted there are about 12,000 people in the community who are aged 80 and up.

"If you look at the between [the ages of] 70 and 79, it's at least double that, maybe even more a much bigger category to work your way through," she said.

She also noted the rollout is dependent on the health unit continuing to receive its allocated doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. Currently, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health is receiving the Pfizer-BioTechandModernavaccines. Both require two shots.

Seniors 'registering in droves'

The health unit started vaccinations of people aged 80 and up on Feb. 19., and while Mercer said she initially had concerns older adults wouldn't be able to navigate the online registration "our seniors are registering and they're registering in droves."

In fact, she said the health unit was beta testing the website one Thursday evening, and hadn't officially released a link to it,when staff noticed hundreds of people, and in particular seniors, filling out the pre-registration form. Mercer said it's likely because people are eager to know when they can be vaccinated and so it came up in their online searches.

She said that pre-registration has been important because it means when vaccine doses are available, public health is able to "quickly invite them" to appointments.

"As we move through the rest of the pandemic and as the next groups become available for vaccine, we'll be pre-registering people. It is the simplest and easiest way that I can put a call out like we did [Monday]morning, for 5,000 people to be able to book their appointments," Mercer said.

"That's what you need when you need to be efficient and effective you need to be able to quickly call out large numbers of people who have already pre-registered and meet the criteria to have a vaccine."

Mercer said 16,697 doses of the vaccine had been distributed in the communities covered by the health unit covers and more than 6,500 people have received two doses.

Listen to an interview with Dr. Nicola Mercer on CBC Radio's Fresh Air: