All COVID-19 booster shot appointments now booked in Ottawa

All COVID-19 vaccine booster appointments in Ottawa were quickly booked up Monday morning after eligibility expanded to all adults in Ontario.

"We apologize for the inconvenience and are working hard to add more capacity and availability," Ottawa Public Health said on Twitter just before 8:15 a.m. Monday. "Pharmacies in Ottawa continue to offer vaccines to eligible residents."

Some residents reported being able to book doses as early as Sunday night. In a statement, the province said availability on the portal does open earlier than the official given time to ensure that it works as scheduled.

"It is not uncommon for booking system eligibility to go live early when a new group becomes eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. This helps to ensure the booking system is ready to accept bookings and that caches are cleared for those accessing the booking system," a spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott's office said. 

The province said late Monday morning that more than 125,000 appointments has been booked through the provincial portal by 10 a.m.

About 634,000 people in Ottawa became eligible to book an appointment for a third COVID-19 vaccine dose at 8 a.m. Monday, but the health unit warned there would not be enough people to vaccinate everyone quickly.

"The reality is on Monday, we may not have a lot of new appointments for the newly eligible 18 plus population. There may be no or very few appointments available," medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches said on Friday, noting that supply is not the issue.

"No one needs to worry about supply. What we're limited by at the moment is that giving the vaccine is an act that's regulated, so it has to be done by a regulated health professional. So we only have so many regulated health professionals that are able to immunize and we're calling on them."

Megan Harris told CTV News Ottawa she logged on at around 7:45 a.m., but by the time she got through, the closest option was far away.

"It was hard to log in, so Iogged in and they said it was at least an hour and a half in queue until I got a response. So, I kept working and finally the screen flashed and I was able to fill in my information only to find out the closest shot was going to be about five hours away round-trip in Pembroke," she said. "And it was going to be in March or April. Not good."

Harris said she found the experience frustrating.

"I honestly don’t know what’s going to work. Everybody’s trying to do the best they can. Nobody’s really been through this before. I mean, I’m not blaming anybody, I don’t want to blame anybody," she said. 

Joey Bak, on the other hand, was able to book, but it was more than eight hours before the portal officially opened. His mother logged on at around 11:45 p.m. Sunday and was able to get him an appointment.

"I was surprised. I was shocked that the portal had opened early. I mean, I’m happy about it, but I’m also wondering why it was opened early. I mean, it should be equal access to Ontarians," he said.

His mom, Nancy Pawelek said she found the appointment when trying to change her husband's appointment time when she saw more appointments were made available.

"I went on to the site at about 11:30 last night and the only way you can see available times in Ontario is to try to change an appointment, so I entered my husbands information at first, got onto the site and when I got to the bottom of the form I noticed it already said 18 plus, it no longer said 50 plus," she explained. "So i went back to the top of the form and put Joey’s information in and at 11:43 last night Joey got his vaccination appointment booked for Thursday."

The move to expand eligibility for third doses comes in the wake of the Omicron variant of concern, which is believed to be more transmissible than the Delta variant—the previous dominant strain. The province also decreased the time between second and third doses to three months from six.

The government has previously planned to expand booster eligibility in early January.

Ottawa Public Health has been regularly announcing additional vaccine appointments on its Twitter account. OPH announced 8,000 new appointments late Saturday night for residents 50 and older and another 11,000 early Sunday morning. By 10:30 a.m. Sunday, they were all booked.

In a short thread, OPH thanked the people who booked the 19,000 spots, but echoed Dr. Etches's warning that appointments will be limited.

Pharmacies also offer booster doses. You can see a list of participating pharmacies on the provincial government's website. 

But new capacity limits mean fewer people can be inside at a time and pharmacists are also feeling tired.

"Health-care professionals have a degree of burnout," Ontario Pharmacists' Association CEO Justin Bates told CTV News Ottawa. "We're extending holidays hours, opening on stat holidays … so there's been a ramp-up, but there are capacity limits as well."

You can still get a booster if you were vaccinated either fully or partially with the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Ontario government recommends those individuals receive an mRNA vaccine as their third dose.

--With files from CTV News Ottawa's Jackie Perez and Colton Praill.