Ontario’s new online portal for booking COVID-19 vaccination appointments at provincial mass immunization clinics is launching at 8 a.m. on Monday, March 15th — but the provincial government is urging only those eligible to receive vaccines to use it.
“It’s critical that everyone in Ontario understands how this portal works,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said during a media conference at Queen’s Park on Sunday (March 14). “So let me clear, because this could not be more important. When this launches tomorrow, it is only to book vaccine appointments for those 80 years of age or older.”
Until April, the website and customer service desk will only be available for booking appointments for Ontario residents who are 80 years of age or older in 2021 (born in 1941 or earlier). This means that a 79-year-old who turns 80 on December 31, 2021 is also eligible for an appointment.
If an Ontario resident 80 years or older in 2021 doesn’t have access to the internet, or otherwise needs assistance, a person trusted to make an appointment on their behalf can do so instead.
The website is located at ontario.ca/bookvaccine, where people will be guided to make an appointment through the provincial booking system, or through their local public health unit if there is a local public health unit booking system or call centre in place.
Retired general Rick Hillier, chair of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force, said the booking system will have more than 800,000 appointments available across the province. To support the administration of vaccines, 255 vaccination sites across the province are planned for March, including 153 mass immunization clinics.
When booking an appointment, people will be asked for information from their green Ontario health card (numbers on the front and back of the card are needed), as well as their birth date, postal code, and email address and/or phone number. At the time of booking, eligible people will schedule both their first and second vaccination appointments.
People 80 years or older who don’t have internet access or don’t have someone to help them, or who otherwise require assistance with booking, can call the Provincial Vaccine Information Line number at 1-888-999-6488 from Monday to Sunday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
People who still have the red-and-white Ontario health card will also need to telephone, as the online system will not accept the older health cards.
To accommodate demand, Premier Ford said the information line will be staffed by 2,200 customer service representatives.
From April to July, the system will be gradually opened up in five-year increments to adults aged 60 to 79. In July, the system will be expanded to include those 59 years of age and younger.
For the month of March, Ontario is expecting to receive 870,480 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 483,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine. Ontario has also received 194,500 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine the week of March 8th.
“We are ready to ramp up immediately to 150,000 vaccinations a day, we just need more vaccines,” Ford said. “We have the capacity to do 4.8 million in a month.”
As of March 14, Ontario has administered 1,158,355 doses of vaccine. A total of 285,615 people have been fully immunized with two doses of vaccine, representing 1.93 per cent of Ontario’s total population.
An estimated 70 to 90 per cent of the population needs to be fully immunized to achieve herd immunity.
