GTHA Mayors and Chairs call for additional COVID-19 vaccine supply

HAMILTON, ON - "Today, Mayors and Chairs from the 11 largest municipal governments across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area held their regular weekly meeting to discuss the ongoing response to COVID-19 across the region.

As the GTHA faces a third wave and our hospitals work to help people, our municipalities continue to administer all vaccine available from the provincial and federal governments. We remain fully committed to our job as municipalities which is to put as many vaccines into as many arms as we can, as quickly as we can, vaccine supply permitting. As much clarity as possible with respect to vaccine supply is obviously central to our ability to carry out this task.

We support the efforts announced by the province to make sure residents in postal code hot spots have increased access to vaccine. We strongly support any action by the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario to increase vaccine supply right now so that we can vaccinate more people in these hot spot areas and on the provincial priority list.

We are also very supportive of Premier Ford's goal of vaccinating 40 per cent of Ontarians by May 5 and we await further details on how we can collaborate together to make that happen, including on questions of vaccine supply. We believe that achieving this goal will require increased supply for the GTHA and the deployment of additional human resources.

 Recognizing the scale of this undertaking means it will take time, we want residents across the GTHA to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The GTHA Mayors and Chairs continue to urge all residents who are eligible to receive the vaccine right now to sign up for their vaccine appointment."

“Hamilton’s COVID-19 vaccination effort is running smoothly and efficiently. We support the goal of the Provincial Government to vaccinate 40 per cent of people in Ontario by May 5, but the simple truth is that in order to ramp it up in Hamilton, we need an increased supply of vaccines. We strongly support efforts by the Provincial and Federal governments to deliver more vaccines so we can get them into the arms of Hamiltonians.”

- Mayor Fred Eisenberger