With more and more individuals getting immunized the mass vaccinations clinics at North Bay Memorial Gardens have started to slow down.
Andrea McLellan, Director of Immunization Strategy for the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit, told the media during last Thursday's Zoom media conference that a change in vaccination strategy will start to take place next month.
"We will be at Memorial Gardens until approximately mid-August, we do have a definitive date that we have to move on," admitted McLellan.
"Our plans right now are to start shutting down the mass immunization clinics and moving toward more targetted efforts through pop-up clinics, mobile clinics, and moving throughout the district to try and provide immunization to people who may have barriers to receive vaccines through mass immunization clinics.
"Our planning and evaluation team is pulling together information that shows us where the pockets of low immunization coverage rates are and we want to target some efforts at those locations initially."
As of late Monday afternoon, 76.6 per cent of the population over 12 in the region has had at least one dose, while 65.12 per cent of the region's population 12 and over is fully vaccinated.
McLellan says if there is a need for larger clinics for over 400 or 500 individuals, the Health Unit says it will have other options available once Memorial Gardens becomes an ice rink again.
"There are options available to us throughout and including places we have used in the past for our flu clinics so we are not concerned about the ability to provide larger-scale clinics in the event we require them, but we are pivoting to start looking for more pop-ups and mobile clinic focus," she said.
