Some London family doctors to start administering Moderna vaccines

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Some London family doctors will begin administering Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses this week, a first round of about 1,200 shots officials hope to have in arms by the end of the week.

Between nine and 11 primary-care clinics will receive the Moderna doses, said Phil Vandewalle, a physician and co-chair of the London Middlesex Primary Care Alliance vaccination task force.

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Some family doctors’ offices will administer the doses as part of their daily workflow while others are setting up mini-clinics for eligible patients, he said.

“We’re all going to take small amounts,” Vandewalle said.

“We have a six-hour window once we puncture a vial to get the vaccine into arms, otherwise we’re going to be wasting doses. We really have to get it to people in the timeframe . . . get vaccines into arms with as little waste as possible. That is our goal.”

Vandewalle said his office, the Thames Valley Family Health Team in Strathroy, will administer about 150 Moderna shots to eligible patients at a dedicated clinic Saturday.

The small-scale Moderna rollout comes on the heels of a highly successful Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine deployment in local primary-care clinics. London-area family doctors have administered about 5,500 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to patients since early April, nearly its total allocation.

The rate of Oxford-AstraZeneca uptake in London area primary-care clinics is among the highest in the province, Vandewalle said. The province on Tuesday paused administering first doses of the vaccine citing the rare risk of blood clots.

Though much of the focus of the provincial vaccine rollout has been on pharmacies and the mass vaccination centres run by health units, primary-care clinics are well-suited to reach some target groups, Vandewalle said.

Family doctors have a relationship with their patients and can answer questions or quell concerns they may have, he said.

“People do trust their primary-care physicians and I think that helps build trust in the vaccine,” Vandewalle said. “We really can capture those people who are on the fence.”

With eligibility for mass vaccination centre appointments opening to the 40-and-older crowd on Thursday, followed by the 30-and older cohort next week and everyone 18 and older by the end of the month, family doctors’ offices will play a key role in the next phase of the rollout, Vandewalle said.

Primary-care clinics are ready to help the health unit target neighbourhoods that are consistently lagging behind in vaccine uptake as the rollout ramps up, he said.

The Middlesex-London Health Unit is expecting about 22,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses this week, about 12,000 are Pfizer-BioNTech doses and the remainder are Moderna.

The health unit reported 55 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday. The number of deaths since the start of the pandemic remains unchanged at 210.

Unlike the three London area mass vaccination clinics, which set out to see a specific number of people daily and require a steady, predictable flow of doses, the number of shots destined for primary care in the coming weeks and months may be more variable, associate medical officer of health Alex Summers said Tuesday.

“I anticipate we’ll be able to send Moderna out weekly to primary care. How much will go out the door will depend on the needs of the people that primary care are seeing,” he said.

“The relationship people have with their primary care physicians is a really important one, for some, and as a result it’s a place where we know the vaccine rollout can make some gains. We’re looking forward to seeing that expand.”

jbieman@postmedia.com