Healthy kids aged 13 and younger and seniors with underlying health problems will be able to get the H1N1 vaccine starting Monday, the province announced yesterday.
The children are expected to account for 1.5 million shots and the seniors, 750,000.
"The highest burden of illness is in the young and the highest rates of hospitalization are in the young and that's why it's really important for younger people to go forward and get the shot," Dr. Arlene King, chief medical officer of health, told reporters.
While seniors are less likely to get sick from the virus, those who do are more likely to have serious complications or die, assistant deputy public health minister Allison Stuart said in explaining the reasoning behind seniors with chronic health conditions.
LIMITED ACCESS
Until this point, the vaccine was only available to those under the age of 65 with chronic health problems, pregnant women, healthy children six months to five years old, people in remote or isolated communities, health-care workers, seniors in hospitals and long-term care homes, household contacts of high-risk people who can't be immunized or may not respond to the vaccine, first responders and frontline correctional workers.
The afternoon announcement came hours after Ontario received 342,000 of the 470,000 adjuvanted doses -- those with additives that improve immune response to the vaccine -- that were expected by next week. Another 272,500 doses may come next week, Stuart said.
This is in addition to the 375,000 unadjuvanted doses received earlier this week.
It could take up to three weeks to immunize this latest wave of the population, King said.
CALL DOCTOR
Those eligible for the vaccine were urged to call their family doctors to see if they have the vaccine before going to a public health clinic to receive it.
While the federal government plans to have enough doses to vaccinate the rest of the population by Christmas, that doesn't necessarily mean everyone who wants the shot will have it in time for the holidays, King said.
"We are evaluating the supply, the demand and the capacity to deliver that on almost a daily basis and we will continue to do that to determine when we would in fact launch into the next phase," she said.
There have been nearly 2.8 million doses distributed to public health clinics, doctors' offices, hospitals and long-term care facilities across the province so far, with many facilities saying they're running out, Stuart said.
As of yesterday, there had been 61 confirmed deaths from H1N1 in Ontario since April.
There were 166 people in hospital with the virus and 80 people in intensive care units, King said.
TAMARA.CHERRY@SUNMEDIA.CA
