Ontario's Vaccine Portal Launch & Variants of Concern
LEAD: ZOOMER SQUAD - ONTARIO'S VACCINE BOOKING PORTAL LAUNCH The long-awaited provincial vaccine booking portal launched today for people 80 and older. We have heard from people who were able to book appointments...some say it was a real ordeal while others say it was a breeze. Libby Znaimer is joined by the Zoomer Squad's David Cravit, Vice President of Zoomer Media and Chief Membership Officer at CARP, Bill VanGorder, Interim Chief Policy Officer at CARP and Peter Muggeridge, Senior Editor of Zoomer Magazine. SEGMENT 2: IS A THIRD WAVE IMMINENT DUE TO RISE IN VARIANTS OF CONCERN? With growing reports of variants of concern...is a third wave of the pandemic inevitable? Toronto’s medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, has warned this past week that the city is at risk of seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases thanks in part to growth in variants. Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is currently building an 84-bed field hospital in its parking lot, in anticipation of a third wave. Most of Ontario’s confirmed variant cases haven’t yet gone through the time-consuming sequencing test that identifies which specific variant is present, but B.1.1.7 has been found in over 90-percent of samples that have been tested. Libby Znaimer is joined by Ryan Imgrund, biostatistician and educator; Dr. Timothy Sly, epidemiologist and professor at the school of Occupational and Public Health at Ryerson University; and Dr. Robert Kingstone of Forest Hill Family Health.