Hello everyone. Time for another (much shorter) vaccine update!

Today the Chief Medical Officer of Health of Ontario Dr. Williams announced an “unpausing” of AstraZeneca — for second doses of vaccines only — during the week of May 24. He announced that anyone who received their first dose of AstraZeneca between March 10th and March 19th would be eligible to receive a second dose if they want.

This is done because the risk of Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (the blood clot seen with first doses) is much lower in the second dose, compared to the first.

Dr. Williams further instructed people to contact the pharmacy or office where they got their first dose. We have not received our official orders to proceed from the Ministry of Health and until we get those we cannot do anything. Moreover, since most pharmacies in Windsor-Essex don’t have AZ, we won’t know how many people or when to schedule for, until we get confirmation of how many vaccines we will get.

Many pharmacies are in the middle of crazy days, administering Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to our community and we were given no warning of this change. Please have patience and compassion when calling to speak to the location you got your vaccine.

They are overwhelmed and many of them didn’t have the ability to listen to this mornings press conference and are just finding this out when you call. Many will be caught off guard, so please be kind.

We are all doing what we can to help with this unprecedented public health initiative but many of my colleagues involved in vaccination directly are at the end of their physical and mental rope. This has been an incredible undertaking but we need your support as much as you need us to provide the vaccine.

As we learn more and get the information from the Ministry I will post another update.

Stay Safe, Stay Kind and have a wonderful long weekend!

To read the original news release click here.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels