Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens is ready to try something radical to get vaccines into arms, including holding a trans-national mass vaccination clinic.
With still no word from the federal government on shipping vaccines from Detroit to Windsor, Dilkens said he's willing to set up a clinic where Canadian vaccine recipients sit on one side of the demarcation line, and American nurses stand on the other.
"It certainly is not our preferred option but left with no other alternative and the thought that hundreds, if not thousands of doses of vaccine are going to hit the landfill on the Detroit side, we're going to find a way to make this happen," he said.
While residents in Windsor are clamouring for a second dose of the vaccine against COVID-19, health officials in Detroit are having trouble finding enough people willing to get a shot.
Almost 6,000 people in Windsor have signed up to get their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine from Michigan.
"They have a huge supply of vaccine available, but they don't have people who want to take it," said Dilkens. "At the mass vaccination site they had at Ford Field, they were staffed and ready to go to administer 7,000 vaccines a day. On their best day, they did 2,500."
On Wednesday, the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Board approved the closure of the tunnel once the logistics are figured out.
Dilkens and Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj have been lobbying Ottawa for weeks to approve the shipment of the vaccines. A request was made through the special access program, but the federal government referred it to another department of Health Canada. To date, that department has not responded.
Meanwhile, pressure is mounting in the U.S. to reopen the border, and Dilkens does not think it will be long now. Lawmakers and business leaders want it open by July 4, and even President Joe Biden has mentioned that date.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been reticent to commit to reopening the border, but the agreement to keep it closed expires on June 21, and he has stipulated he wants 75 per cent of Canadians to be vaccinated first. So far, over half have had at least one shot.
"I know that on the first day the border opens into the U.S., you will have 10,000 people crossing," said Dilkens. "I want to help reunite families. I want to help make sure that we can accelerate the full vaccination of our community because if this is a race between the variants and the vaccine, I want the community to win."
