Mississauga’s only COVID-19 community pop-up clinic fully booked within just 2 hours

Seven thousand vaccine slots at Mississauga’s only COVID-19 community pop-up vaccine clinic were fully booked within just two hours of registration, the organization hosting the clinic says.

Toronto sending majority of vaccine doses to hot spots in coming weeks, expects boost in supply

The Muslim Association of Canada’s vaccine pop-up was one of two announced in Peel Region Tuesday, set to run from April 30 to May 11. The other is being hosted by the Brampton Islamic Centre.

Peel Region said in a news release the goal of the clinics was “to boost the vaccination efforts within the Muslim community during the month of Ramadan.” Together, the two clinics were supposed to administer 14,000 doses of vaccine.

But within the first two hours of booking, all of its available spots were completely full, prompting questions about about a second batch.

“The second batch of appointments link was posted on the Peel vaccine booking website. It seems that all vaccine appointments were filled right away,” the organization said in a tweet Tuesday.

The clinics are meant to serve those 18 and up in hot-spot communities, neighbourhoods hardest hit by COVID-19 in terms of deaths, hospitalizations and transmission.

Those communities include the following postal codes:

• L4T, L4W, L4X, L4Z
• L5A, L5B, L5C, L5K, L5L, L5M, L5N, L5R, L5V, L5W
• L6P, L6R, L6S, L6T, L6V, L6W, L6X, L6Y, L6Z
• L7A, L7C

In a news release, Peel Region acknowledged “appointments are extremely limited.”

“Demand is expected to be high, which may cause issues with the registration system, we appreciate patience,” the release said.

The two new clinics bring the total number of community clinics in Peel Region to three. Ontario announced the first at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Complex a few weeks ago — though that clinic is technically located in Toronto and serves only two Peel hot-spot postal codes: L4T and L6S.

Additional pop-up clinics are set to open throughout the month of May, Peel Region says.

Late last week, the region also announced workplace clinics at Amazon, Maple Leaf Foods and Maple Lodge Farms, as workplace exposures continue to be a major contributor to community transmission.

Also last week, Ontario’s COVID-19 science advisory table recommended that the province revise its vaccine rollout plan to divert up to 50 per cent of available vaccine doses to 74 hot-spot postal codes. The current strategy allows for 25 per cent of total doses to go to 114 designated hot spots.

Twenty-five of the province’s hot spots are in Peel.

Meanwhile, Ontario reported another 3,265 cases of COVID-19 and 29 more deaths linked to the virus on Tuesday. Of those, 673 cases were reported in Peel.

CBC