Thunder Bay district receiving additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine

Additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines have started arriving in the Thunder Bay District as the region continues to see case rates among the highest in Ontario.

The Thunder Bay District Health Unit reported 40 new cases on Thursday, which brings the region's active case count to 406. Through the first 18 days of March, there have been 921 COVID-19 cases announced.

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre had 41 patients admitted who have tested positive for COVID-19, of which 11 are in the intensive care unit.

Two local representatives in the provincial legislature Thunder Bay-AtikokanNDP MPP Judith Monteith Farrell and Thunder Bay-Superior North Liberal MPP Michael Gravelle have both called on the province to designate Thunder Bay as a COVID-19 hot spot.

Thunder Bay district medical officer of health Dr. Janet DeMille said that classification would be relevant to the province's second phase of its COVID-19 vaccine rollout, which is expected to begin next month.

"We actually have received some additional vaccine over and above what we were expecting in allotment," DeMille said. I hope to see that ongoing, whether we're officially included as a hot spot in that strategyor not."

The area had nearly exclusively been receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but doses of the Moderna vaccine have started being sent as well.

DeMille said the province has provided indication that there will be about 5,000 doses received weeklybetween this week, next week and the following week.

"We have more capacity. We could be delivering more vaccine than we currently are at the present time. I think the issue primarily is the overall supply coming to the province and the distribution across," DeMille said, adding she is looking forward to primary care being able to provide doses to their patients and the vaccine to be available in pharmacies.

"We are capable and have been delivering on all of the vaccine doses we are receiving."

DeMille said the Monday launch of the provincial vaccine booking system went "reasonably well," with some problems and technical issues on the first day. Since then, it seems to be running smoother.

Variants of concern

Late last week, the health unit announced that one case had screened positive for a variant of concern.

DeMille said there are a number of cases still awaiting screening results, but she expects there will be more.

"What we're seeing across the province is that the variants of concern are really taking over, in terms of COVID-19 cases," she said. "These variants of this COVID-19 virus are known to spread more easily, and therefore, we would anticipate more cases with people getting sick and higher numbers of people with more severe illness and requiring hospitalization."

The Thunder Bay district has been in the grey-lockdown tier of the province's colour-coded pandemic response framework since March 1.

DeMille said she is cautiously optimistic that the numbers are stabilizing, with the region having hit a peak between March 4 and 7.

"Our numbers would still very much be in the grey, and that relates to the number of cases we have, the outbreaks we have and the hospital capacity," she said.