More Torontonians can get the new COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. Here’s what you need to know

October 25, 2024 Canuck

More Torontonians will be able to get their doses of a new COVID-19 vaccine on Monday.

Everyone who is at least six months old will be able to get doses of the KP.2 vaccine for free, Toronto Public Health says, and do not require an Ontario health card to receive the vaccine.

Where can I get the COVID-19 vaccine?

Provincial funding for mass immunization clinics ended last year, prompting the City of Toronto to permanently shutter its four fixed-site COVID-19 vaccine centres in December 2023.

Even though these clinics are no longer around, COVID-19 vaccines can be found at select pharmacies or through participating health-care providers.

That said, Toronto Public Health continues to offer clinics for children between six months to four years old, with parents able to book their appointments online.

Torontonians can find a comprehensive list of pharmacies administering COVID-19 vaccines on the province’s website, where it provides hours of operation, contact information and appointment details.

Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General Hospital, could not speak on exact vaccine rates in Toronto recently but said they are lower “than what would be helpful.”

“Essentially, we really should be doubling down our efforts to get vaccines into the most vulnerable individuals,” Bogoch said. “There’s a lot of vaccine programs in long-term care institutions and seniors homes, but there are homebound seniors who might be vulnerable and who may remain unvaccinated.”

Toronto Public Health says mobile vaccine teams provide doses to underhoused individuals and residents in shelters, while Toronto Paramedic Services can provide COVID-19 and flu vaccines to anyone who is homebound.

What should I know about this vaccine?

This particular vaccine was designed for the KP.2 sublineage of Omicron, which was approved by Health Canada in September. Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine, Comirnaty, replaces the previous version that targeted the XBB 1.5 Omicron subvariant.

“There’s a bit of an arms race between the virus mutating and us trying to create vaccine that most closely resembles the circulating strain. We’re never going to get it perfect,” Bogoch told CTV News Toronto in an interview on Wednesday.

Currently, in Canada, however, the strain with the highest number of positive cases is the Omicron KP.3.1.1 variant, which is a subvariant of the XEC strain, a hybrid of KS.1.1 and KP.3.3 subvariants. This variant accounts for 48.4 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in the country as of Oct. 13, according to the latest data from the Publc Health Agency of Canada.

“The good news is that at any point the pandemic in Canada, regardless of what vaccine was being deployed and regardless of the variant of COVID that is circulating at any point in time, the vaccine has always done a remarkable job in reducing the risk of severe infection, such as hospitalization and death, especially among those who are most vulnerable,” Bogoch said.

“It’s not a perfect match, because it will never be a perfect match.”

With files from CTVNews.ca’s Hunter Crowther

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