TORONTO -- Pop-up vaccination clinics in Toronto and across Ontario are offering COVID-19 vaccines to Indigenous people in larger cities, including those who are homeless and especially at risk.
Anishnawbe Health Toronto, an Indigenous health-care group, has been travelling to Indigenous encampments across the city to deliver doses to some of the most vulnerable people in Toronto.
“It saves lives,” Harvey Manning, director of programs and services at Anishnawbe Health Toronto, told CTV News. “A lot of these people live inside of these encampments together and it would save each others’ lives.”
Since many people in these encampments do not have identification, the organization does what it can to keep track of those who’ve been vaccinated. Once someone receives a dose, they are handed a letter with a date for when they can receive the second vaccine.
Dominico has lived in a downtown Toronto encampment for more than a year. It’s not clear just how many people also live at the same site.
“The homeless situation has just spiralled out of control and COVID has just brought it to light,” he said.
Indigenous people living in urban areas are on many provincial vaccine priority lists, but reaching them has become an issue.
Dr. Lisa Richardson, strategic adviser of Indigenous health at the University of Toronto, believes mobile vaccination units that bring doses to the people will help bridge the gap.
"The idea of actually being able to receive vaccine from a trusted, known Indigenous health provider, in a safe place, whether it be an Indigenous health access centre or taking a vaccine right to a centre where people work, a community, the parks, is a way to facilitate uptake in this vaccination strategy,” she said.
As of mid-March, Anishnawbe Health had completed about 1,500 vaccinations in the Toronto area. The group is working to open a mass-vaccination clinic in downtown Toronto in order to expand its vaccine efforts.
Health groups in other parts of the province are also making the extra effort to ensure that Indigenous people living in cities have access to vaccines.
In Thunder Bay, Ont., which has seen more cases per capita in the past two weeks than anywhere else in Ontario, the Matawa Health Co-operative have been running a handful of vaccination clinics aimed at getting doses into the arms of the Indigenous population in the area.
The Matawa group offers translation and transportation services to ensure people are comfortable when they arrive.
"It was almost like their little social gathering," Crystal Bell, Matawa Health Co-operative’s director of clinical and nursing services, told The Canadian Press last week. "They were really thankful."
As of mid-March, the group had vaccinated nearly 500 people. There are an estimated 4,000 Indigenous people living in the area.
There are also Indigenous-specific vaccination clinics in Sudbury, Ottawa and Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins, to name a few.
With files from The Canadian Press
