Last updated on March 28 2:30 p.m.
Statement from Wolf Klassen, Vice President, Program Support, Michael Garron Hospital
Each day our vaccine clinic teams go to great efforts to make sure that every prepared dose of the COVID-19 vaccine is provided to an eligible individual. Despite very rigorous inventory management, there are leftover doses on some days. Leftover doses primarily occur when people do not show up for a booked appointment. To date, efforts to use leftover doses have included finding eligible patients in the hospital and reaching out to community partners to call their eligible clients in.
In our recent experience, the number of left over doses is typically under five however we have had a few days where we had more. We have been very successful in using doses this way however as vaccines have become more available locally it is becoming more challenging to find eligible individuals each day to administer leftover doses to on very short notice. Given the strict storage requirements of the COVID-19 vaccine, a dose needs to be used within a few hours.
In anticipation of a continued need for a strategy to find eligible individuals to take vaccinations on a last minute basis, MGH opened an online form on Friday, March 26. On Saturday, March 27 we updated the form to ensure individuals could clearly confirm their eligibility in various groups as a part of Ontario’s phase 2 vaccination plan. We received over 60,000 submissions in approximately 30 hours. At this time we are no longer accepting names for our stand-by list. We are grateful to those eligible individuals who signed up as this will help ensure we get COVID-19 vaccines into as many arms as possible and that no dose will be wasted.
Please note that we will only be reaching out to those who are eligible for vaccines according to the Ontario government's COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Plan for leftover doses. We kindly ask that you please do not call Michael Garron Hospital (MGH) or ETHP’s COVID-19 Immunization Clinics as we do not currently have additional information.