Mayor creates online waitlist for cross-border vaccinations

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To be ready in case Windsor gets the go-ahead to send people to Michigan for its surplus vaccines, Windsor’s mayor has created an online waitlist.

It’s already live at mayordrewdilkens.ca/us-vaccines.

In recent days, the mayor has been aggressively pursuing possible ways to gain access to vaccine in the Detroit area that’s currently going to waste, with an aim of getting the local population fully vaccinated with two doses as quickly as possible.

To circumvent obstacles from the U.S. and Canadian federal governments, he’s been exploring setting up a vaccination clinic on the Detroit side of either the Ambassador Bridge or Windsor-Detroit Tunnel so people could drive over, get the shot, wait 15 minutes and drive home without going through U.S. Customs.

Dilkens has also talked of people getting the shot in the middle of the tunnel, with local residents standing just inside the Canadian boundary while the shot is delivered by pharmacists standing on the U.S. side.

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Windsor Regional Hospital is meanwhile continuing with its application to Health Canada to import the surplus Detroit doses into Windsor.

“We’re working on a number of things that could come together quite quickly, and we’ll need to be able to activate people in the community who are interested on fairly short notice,” Dilkens said late Friday, shortly after he participated in an online meeting between Ontario’s border city mayors and Bill Blair, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

Dilkens said the wait list is for people in need of the second dose of Pfizer, the only vaccine “on offer” from health-care sources in Detroit.

Earlier in the day Friday, the Ontario government announced the start of second-dose vaccinations. Local people age 80 and over can start reserving appointments for the second shot starting Monday.

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“But there are still going to be a lot of folks who are going to be waiting for a long time to get their second dose,” said Dilkens. He argues that any extra doses acquired from Detroit would help speed up the full inoculation of the local population and contribute to the country’s overall efforts.

Reopening the border as well as Ontario’s multi-phased reopening plan are predicated on the proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, said Dilkens.

“To the extent we can help accelerate that with those doses that have been offered to us, which otherwise are going to be wasted and spoiled, we are going to continue to push to make that happen.”

Dilkens said he received no assurances from Blair that there would be rule changes for local people returning from Detroit after getting vaccinated. As it now stands, those people would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days, a major impediment to cross-border vaccination.

“We’ll keep pushing, we’re not done, we have some other arrows in the quiver,” said the mayor. He added he got the impression from Blair that a recent news article from Washington State forecasting a June 22 border reopening “wasn’t far off the mark.”

bcross@postmedia.com