COVID-19 vaccine: High-risk health care workers in Hamilton can get their 2nd dose sooner
Published May 18, 2021 at 9:04 pm
Health care workers who are considered “high-risk” in Hamilton are now eligible to get their second dose of the COVID-19 sooner than 16-weeks after their first.
It was announced Tuesday (May 18) that eligible individuals will receive a notification via text message or email with their new appointment date. Those who do not receive a notification by the end-of-day Thursday (May 20) can call the Hamilton Public Health Services COVID-19 Hotline at 905-974-9848, option 7.
High-risk healthcare workers eligible for shortened second-dose intervals
- All hospital and acute care staff in frontline roles with COVID-19 patients and/or with a high risk of exposure to COVID-19, including nurses and personal support workers and those performing aerosol-generating procedures:
- Critical Care Units
- Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Departments
- COVID-19 Medical Units
- Code Blue Teams, rapid response teams
- General internal medicine and other specialists involved in the direct care of COVID-19 positive patients
- All patient-facing healthcare workers involved in the COVID-19 response:
- COVID-19 Specimen Collection Centers (e.g., Assessment centers, community COVID-19 testing locations)
- Teams supporting outbreak response (e.g., IPAC teams supporting outbreak management, inspectors in the patient environment, redeployed healthcare workers supporting outbreaks or staffing crisis in congregate living settings)
- COVID-19 vaccine clinics and mobile immunization teams
- Mobile Testing Teams
- COVID-19 Isolation Centers
- COVID-19 Laboratory Services
- Current members of Ontario’s Emergency Medical Assistance Team (EMAT) who may be deployed at any time to support an emergency response
- Medical First Responders
- ORNGE
- Paramedics
- Firefighters providing medical first response as part of their regular duties
- Police and special constables providing medical first response as part of their regular duties
- Community healthcare workers serving specialized populations including:
- Needle exchange/syringe programs and supervised consumption and treatment services
- Indigenous healthcare service providers including but not limited to:
- Aboriginal Health Access Centers, Indigenous Community Health Centers,
- Indigenous Interprofessional Primary Care Teams, and Indigenous Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinics
- Long-term care home and retirement-home healthcare workers, including nurses and personal support workers and Essential Caregivers
- Individuals working in Community Health Centers serving disproportionally affected communities and/or communities experiencing the highest burden of health, social and economic impacts from COVID-19
- Critical healthcare workers in remote and hard to access communities, e.g., sole practitioner
- Home and community care healthcare workers, including nurses and personal support workers caring for recipients of chronic homecare and seniors in congregate living facilities or providing hands-on care to COVID-19 patients in the community
To date, Public Health says 49.2 per cent (252,370) of adults in Hamilton have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
All Hamilton residents who are at least 18-years-old are now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Bookings are being accepted through the provincial portal at hamilton.ca/VaccineBooking or by calling 1-888-999-6488.
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Canada is receiving a large infusion of COVID-19 vaccines this week.
The federal government says it expects around 4.5 million doses to arrive this week thanks to planned deliveries from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Pfizer and BioNTech had been scheduled to deliver around two million doses this week as their vaccines continue to flow into Canada on a regular basis after early hiccups in February and March.
But the federal government says the two companies will ship an additional 1.4 million shots, which were originally slated to land next week but are now expected to arrive before the upcoming holiday weekend.
Moderna is also expected to deliver 1.1 million doses this week.
–with files from The Canadian Press
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