30,000 3rd dose of COVID-19 vaccine administered in the Waterloo region in the past week | The Canadian News

COVID-19 vaccination efforts continue to increase in the Waterloo region, as the woman leading the vaccination effort says there has been a substantial increase in third-dose vaccination over the past week.

“We have administered 85,598 third doses here in the Waterloo region,” Vickie Murray told reporters Friday morning. “They are 30,000 more doses than we had done last week.”

While that number has skyrocketed, the number of people between the ages of five and 11 receiving a first dose has dropped.

“At the end of yesterday, we had given 19,053 doses to children ages five to 11,” Murray said. “And that’s 40 percent of our regional population ages five to 11.”

That number increased five percentage points in one week, down from a seven percentage point increase over the previous seven days.

That is still a significant part of the population that gets vaccinated, and GPs and pharmacies continue to play an important role in making this happen.

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“On Monday, primary care and the pharmacy had record days of vaccination,” he said.

“Both primary care and pharmacy exceeded total vaccinations from the previous day by almost 25 percent.”

In total, 7,857 vaccinations were carried out in the area, 4,405 were carried out by pharmacies and 1,210 by family doctors.

Those numbers should continue to gather momentum as the region continues to add more and more clinic appointments.

“Yesterday, we added about 10,000 appointments to Boardwalk and we hope to add another approximately 12,000 appointments to Pinebush today,” Murray said.

One problem the region is trying to combat is the number of no-shows it has for appointments. Murray says there are about 100 a day at the Pinebush Clinic in Cambridge, which is the largest in the region.

She says it’s understandable when people take an older option at a pharmacy or doctor’s office, but still have to cancel so someone else can take the place.

“We want to make sure that the clinic is operating at its maximum capacity all the time,” he said.

“So it would be nice if those canceled appointments were available to someone who has been waiting to get one.”

The region also recognizes that there is a flaw in the cancellation system, so in an effort to facilitate cancellation, it is offering individuals the opportunity to email [email protected] to cancel the appointment.

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