Goodbye Windsor Hall, hello Devonshire Mall: New vaccination site to open Monday
Hospital executive says new site will have higher capacity
A new mass vaccination site is opening up on Monday at the former Sears location at Devonshire Mall.
The pivot to a new site — which comes in the seventh month of the local vaccine rollout — will allow two buildings currently being used as vaccination clinics to return to their original purposes in time for the fall semester.
The vaccine clinic at Windsor Hall, which is owned by the University of Windsor, is closing on Friday, and the St. Clair College Sportsplex vaccine site will shut down on July 22.
Karen Riddell, Windsor Regional Hospital's chief nursing executive and chief operating officer, said that the new site is much larger than the other two.
"At this location, we'll be able to do up to 4,000 vaccines per day within an eight-hour period," said Riddell, who took media outlets on a tour of the site on Friday.
While the new clinic us located with COVID-19 "hot spot" postal code, the closure of Windsor Hall leaves the downtown core without a mass-vaccination clinic, though free public transportation is available from Transit Windsor.
So far, 73.1 per cent of adults in the region have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 29.2 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated.
There are four other vaccination sites in Windsor-Essex that will continue operating until further notice:
- Moy Medical Center.
- WFCU Centre.
- Nature Fresh Farms Recreation Centre in Leamington.
- Libro Credit Union Centre in Amherstburg.
Vaccinations are also available at some pharmacies and select primary-care providers' offices.
To book a vaccine appointment at one of the vaccination sites, visit wevax.ca.
With files from Dale Molnar