Manitoba expects to have administered 200K COVID-19 vaccine doses by early April

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WINNIPEG — The Manitoba government expects that by April 3, it will have administered 200,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

According to Johanu Botha, co-lead of Manitoba’s Vaccine Task Force, the province also expects that by April 18, it will have administered 300,000 doses.

Botha added that Manitoba has reached the daily maximum capacity of 20,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses a day. He said the system still needs to be stress tested.

“We are where we want to be in terms of preparedness,” Botha said in a technical briefing on Wednesday.

The province said that 10,000 of Manitoba’s 18,000 AstraZeneca doses have been administered and that physicians and pharmacists are willing to administer more.

The Manitoba government also explained its accelerated process for giving the vaccines, in which patients stay in the same spot and immunizers circulate along the row of chairs with a cart. The pilot sites of this model are in Morden, Man., and Winnipeg.

It said this model is expected to help increase the number of immunizations per immunizer from between six and eight per hour to 60 immunizations per hour.

The vaccine task force also provided an updated estimate on how long its existing supply of doses will last, saying that all of its supply has been administered, booked or allocated.

It added that all 26,342 booked doses are for appointments in the next five days, and the rest of the doses have been allocated to First Nations partners and clinics.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Manitoba has received 233,540 vaccine doses, 146,529 of which have been administered to Manitobans.

The eligibility criteria remains at 65 years of age and older and 45 years of age or older for First Nations people.

According to the province, there are appointments currently available at the Winnipeg, Brandon, Thompson, Selkirk and Morden supersites, as well as at pop-up clinics in Steinbach, Victoria Beach and Riverton.

Manitoba expects to receive 12,300 doses of the Moderna vaccine this week.