Toronto will host a mass COVID-19 vaccination clinic for children ages five to 11 at the Scotiabank Arena on Sunday, December 12, with the goal of replicating the record success of a clinic for older children and adults last June.
The city announced the superhero-themed event on Monday amid concerns about a resurgence in the spread of the virus and news that two cases of the mysterious new Omicron variant were detected in travelers who had returned to Ottawa.
The city is trying to vaccinate as many of the 200,000 local children between the ages of five and 11 as possible, with clinics at various sites, including schools and now home to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors and Toronto Rock.
Scotiabank Arena’s Toronto Kids Vaccine Day will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and will feature doctors and nurses from Toronto Public Health and Hospital for Sick Children’s training to make jab stress-free for kids. .
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment and Scotiabank are offering giveaways, music and entertainment as TPH, Sick Kids, University Health Network and Michael Garron Hospital conduct mass vaccination.
Appointments are required and can be made by calling 1-833-943-3900 or through the provincial dating website. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/book-vaccine/.
To be eligible, children must be five years old by the end of 2021 (born in 2016) or older. Parents and caregivers of children without an Ontario health card can call 416-338-7600 (TTY: 416-392-0658) to obtain identification to reserve a spot.
Children are also being vaccinated at school clinics, hospitals, city mass immunization clinics, doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and community clinics.
On June 27, more than 25,000 people over the age of 12 were vaccinated at the first massive Scotiabank Arena clinic, helping propel Toronto’s vaccination rate to one of the highest in the world’s major cities.
New COVID-19 infections in Toronto declined steadily in late summer and early fall, but began to rise again in late October or early November, as more people mixed indoors, and the great most of the infected people were not fully vaccinated.
The latest concern is the arrival in Canada of the Omicron variant first detected in South Africa. The Public Health Agency of Canada said early data shows that the variant is more transmissible than the dominant Delta variant, but there is not yet enough information to determine whether Omicron is a serious health threat.
Reference-www.thestar.com