Mayor says Hamilton isn't getting enough COVID-19 vaccines despite high case counts

Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger said he thinks the province isn't giving the city its fair share of vaccines.

"They should put a greater focus on areas that have higher incidence of COVID variant cases ... I'm not saying they're ignoring it entirely, but I don't think they're giving it the kind of attention it deserves," he said in a phone interview on Thursday.

"We're not getting enough, we're a high-incident COVID case area and we're wanting to be sure we're getting an equitable supply that takes those considerations into account and I'm not sure that's happened," he said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Eisenberger points to Hamilton being a regional health centre and having an older population that need vaccines. He thinks the province would benefit by giving regions like Toronto, Peel and Hamilton — which have higher populations and case counts — more doses.

"We need to do more and we'd like to do more, but we don't have the vaccine to do it," he said.

His comments come as the province imposes a province-wide "emergency brake" starting Saturday. It also comes as Hamilton continues to see more variants of concerns and higher case counts.

The city has administered 100,322 doses as of Wednesday evening.

David Jensen, a ministry of health spokesperson, said the province has the capacity to administer 150,000 vaccines each day, "but the biggest challenge remains stable and certain supply."

Vaccination data varies across municipalities

For the past week, CBC News has attempted to determine how many people who are able to get vaccinated have and haven't gotten a jab.

It turns out local public health regions all track the data differently, and not all of them store the same information.

Hamilton says 16.4 per cent of the eligible population were vaccinated as of Tuesday evening.

The county of Brant said it doesn't use the amount of eligible people its has vaccinated as a key indicator, but roughly 42,836 are eligible for the vaccine under the current guidelines and 27,308 doses have been administered as of Thursday. 

"Our main focus remains reaching 75 per cent coverage of the total population of Brant. This is the percentage thought to be required to reach acceptable levels of immunity," Brant County Health Unit spokesperson Ryan Spiteri said.

Six Nations of the Grand River is trying to determine its vaccination coverage rates. There are 11,568 people eligible on the reserve and 142 eligible off the reserve. 

So far, 1,726 people have been partially vaccinated, and 142 people have been fully vaccinated, but those numbers are only for clinics on-reserve.

"Community members did seek vaccinations off-reserve in multiple public health units and we are working to find a way to receive that data to determine our actual vaccination coverage rates," said spokesperson Katie Montour.

Niagara Region Public Health updated data about local vaccination rates after questions from CBC News. It now says 13.9 per cent of people have received a first dose and 1.8 per cent received a second dose. It also says 75,576 doses have been administered.

Haldimand-Norfolk's public health unit says of the 28,594 doses it has received from the province, 19,967 have gone into arms. Halton has administered 82,111 doses so far.

Province has challenges with stable supply

Jensen could not say how many people in Ontario are currently eligible for a vaccine because "eligibility is changing pretty rapidly and can depend on the public health unit."

He added that 12.4 million people will eventually be eligible for the vaccine and data from 8 p.m. Wednesday shows 2,276,313 doses have been administered.

He said as of Tuesday night, more than 80 per cent of seniors 80 and older and half of residents 75 to 79 have received at least one dose of vaccine. They also said more than 90 per cent of long-term care residents are fully immunized.

But that email didn't include the number for other groups, like Indigenous adults.