Public health officials are eagerly awaiting the next delivery of COVID-19 vaccine.

After the first two shipments, health officials were able to vaccinate 914 residents in long term care and high-risk retirement homes across the municipality.

Chatham-Kent’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. David Colby, says in the next few weeks, we should see a substantial amount being delivered to finish up the first phase.

“The long term care, high-risk retirement homes, and Indigenous elder care centre staff and essential caregivers were always part of the first group to be vaccinated, but there wasn’t enough vaccine to do that, so we were instructed to do residents only until vaccine supply stabilized.”

Dr. Colby says now that more supply is being made available, he’s expecting more shipments over the next few weeks.

“The one the week after next is going to be substantial, because they keep talking about the large number of Pfizer doses that have been sent from the federal government to the province,” Dr. Colby says. “The Pfizer plant was retooled in Europe to get higher production, and now we’re seeing the catchup from what we missed before.”