Complaints about COVID-19 vaccine online booking system flood Thunder Bay mayor's office

Thunder Bay's mayor says his office has been receiving a high volume of calls from residents having issues with online booking for the COVID -19 vaccine.

Bill Mauro said the calls and emails to his office regarding the provincial online booking system began on Monday.

"We weren't sure if it was just the problem with the system itself or if it had to do with the availability of vaccines," said Mauro. "The public health unit is aware of it as well. And I know that they're trying to see what they can do to help with this provincial online booking system. It's a great source of frustrationfor a number of people. And hopefully we can see some progress on it in the days and weeks ahead."

Mauro said some residents have also expressed concern about overall vaccine availability in the city.

He said he has also asked the province about this concern, and specifically why Thunder Bay was not included in the province's AstraZenecapilot project, whichwould allow pharmacies to deliver that particular vaccine to individuals aged 60 to 64 if the city was designated a hot spot.

Mauro said, at thetime, Thunder Bay's active case count was significantly above 400 cases.

"I reached out directly to the minister's office two or three weeks ago about this to ensure, as best I was able, that they hadn't forgotten about Thunder Bay when it came to vaccine distribution and inquired specifically about why we would not have been included in that particular pilot," said Mauro.

"During that call they did confirm to me that we would be receiving more vaccine than was considered to be our base amount. They said that to me. I don't know if that's two or three weeks ago now. And so the health unit, I think, has confirmed that at least for a period of time, we did receive more."

Mauro said he was not given a clear answer why the city was not designated as a provincial hot spot.

He also said the ongoing level of COVID-19 cases in Thunder Bay is sobering.

Mauro said it is good news that the number of cases being resolved is up and the overall number of active cases has decreased.

But the mayor said people need to remain vigilant especially with the possibility of variants emerging.

"I guess the concern at this point would be that the people might potentially look at this and become a bit complacent," he said. "I hope that's not the case. We need to all continue to do what we've been doing for the better part of a year now. Be mindful that, you know, the variants of concern are not here yet in Thunder Bay in a big way but that may end up being the case.

"That could then very quickly drive numbers and north again and lead perhaps to more serious illness and potential deaths. So the message is, unfortunately, we need to not get complacent, stick to what we've been doing for the last year or so. "