Everyone aged 18 and over in Ontario will soon be able to get a COVID vaccine
After months of angst about the COVID vaccine not being even remotely widely available in Ontario, the provincial government has just made a huge announcement about when various age groups will be able to access the coveted shot — and it's much sooner than initally planned.
Health Minister Christine Elliott has confirmed a tentative new schedule for the provincewide rollout, which states that all adults 18 and over will be able to get vaxxed starting as soon as May 24, in less than a month's time.
The age range for general inoculations — that is, for those without specified health conditions, not in a hot spot postal code or not part of other groups that have qualified thus far — is 55+ as of this week after lowering in increments of five years at a time from the 80+ demographic that the rollout started with.
By May 3, it is expected that anyone 50 and older in Ontario will be able to get immunized, followed by 40 and older starting May 10, 30 and older starting May 17, and finally, 18 and older starting Victoria Day.
#BREAKING - Health Minister Elliott announces the province will expand vaccine age eligibility in the coming weeks. Everyone aged 18 and over will be eligible for a shot by May 24th.
— Richard Southern (@richard680news) April 29, 2021
April 26: 55+
May 3: 50+
May 10: 40+
May 17: 30+
May 24: 18+ pic.twitter.com/Ztj6I0LVRt
The news is a welcome cause for celebration, to say the least, as citizens have been scrambling to not only gain access to a dose, but to even find out information about how, when and where they can get one in the first place.
In large urban centres like Toronto in particular, it's been a shitshow likened to participating in the Hunger Games, complete with weeks-long waiting lists, thousand-person lineups at pop-up clinics, and pharmacies rapidly running out of supply.
Elliott said in a press conference on Thursday that as of next week, the province will be getting an increased and more predictable supply of shots, meaning that things can really start to ramp up.
It's so far been sluggish, confusing, messy and frustrating to get a jab in Ontario, but it seems that, at long last, we're catching up to those parts of the world that have been efficiently immunizing for weeks now, and more quickly than expected.
