Appointments offered across more rural parts of the North Central region are now booked out.(SHA)

By Glenn Hicks

covid-19

COVID vaccine appointments in North Central booked out within hours

Jan 15, 2021 | 3:42 PM

The initial appointments for COVID-19 vaccinations for people aged 70 and over in the more rural parts of the North Central zone (which includes communities in the one and three sub zones around Prince Albert) appear to have been fully booked within hours.

While that may create some frustration for those eager to get inoculated, the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) says it’s doing the best it can with limited supplies.

On Thursday at 1 p.m., SHA urged all independently living seniors aged 70 and over to make an appointment for their Pfizer-BioNTech jab at one of eight clinics in areas including Christopher Lake, Shellbook and Birch Hills. By 6:45 p.m. Thursday, SHA issued a statement saying those vaccine clinics, as well as ones announced Wednesday for three other communities (including Wakaw) were full. No new appointments will be made until another shipment of the vaccine becomes available.

“It’s a joke,” complained Ernie Wiberg, a 75-year-old resident of the Christopher Lake area. “My sister told me [the announcement] was on Facebook and I called at 3 p.m. [Thursday] and they said it was already full, there were no vacancies.” His local clinic will offer the vaccine on Wednesday, Jan. 20.

Wiberg, who said he doesn’t travel much and has been self-isolating at home, questions how the clinics could have been booked out within two hours of the public announcement and wonders if any pre-booking had occurred. He also thinks the operating hours need to be extended.

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“The clinics [for Christopher Lake] are from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., you might as well not even bother,” he said.

paNOW asked SHA for more information on how many vaccine appointments had been made available and how long it took for them to become fully booked. While precise details were not provided, a spokesperson said in an email that there had not been pre-booking.

“All the clinics were booked shortly after they were announced Thursday. We appreciate everyone’s eagerness to get the vaccine and are doing all we can with what we have,” the statement said.

Figures on vaccinations released by the government Friday afternoon reported that 549 had been given so far in the North Central zone.

For a listing of first and second doses in Saskatchewan administered by geographic zone, visit https://www.saskatchewan.ca/covid19-vaccine-update.

Additional clinics will be scheduled as quickly as possible following the sequencing of priority populations in those zones with high active case rates, the daily report from SHA said. The Saskatchewan Health Authority’s public service announcements on clinics can be found at www.saskhealthauthority.ca/news/Pages/Home.aspx.

As of Friday’s reporting, a total of 14,017 doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in Saskatchewan.

Earlier this week Premier Scott Moe admitted there had been “a bit of a sluggish start” to the vaccine rollout but said measures would be taken to speed things up. He said the federal government would provide about 190,000 vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) by the end of the first quarter of 2021, and that would be enough to inoculate about 95,000 Saskatchewan residents or around.

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glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @princealbertnow