OTTAWA – MPP John Fraser, Liberal Health and Long-Term Care critic, issued the following statement:
“Since the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines in Ontario, the Ford government has been too slow in delivering it to the most vulnerable Ontarians.
After inexplicably pausing the roll out for several days at Christmas and allowing tens of thousands of doses of life saving vaccines to sit in freezers for weeks, the Ford government has announced plans to vaccinate all residents, staff and essential caregivers in long-term care homes located in four COVID-19 hotspots including Toronto, Peel, York and Windsor-Essex by January 21.
This accounts for only 26% of the province’s 626 long-term care homes.
What about the rest of Ontario? Where is the plan to vaccinate all residents in the other 465 long term care homes or Ontario’s retirement and group homes?
We know Ontario has more vaccine doses then this initiative requires and there are more on the way. The government’s own records show they expect to receive an additional 290,000 Pfizer doses by the end of January. What’s the government’s plan to distribute this supply?
Doug Ford said that we had a plan and would be ready when the vaccines arrived. Clearly, that’s not been the case. Ontarians deserve to know what the government plan is for rolling out the vaccine and have daily updates on their progress.
We know the seniors living in long-term care are exceptionally vulnerable to COVID-19 and are at a greater risk of dying from the virus. The priority must be to distribute our vaccine supply to those living and working in long-term care as quickly as possible.
We must not allow further delays in distributing the vaccines. It will only lead to unnecessary suffering and death.”
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