The province has enough vaccine to immunize 2.2 million people, which is intended for the estimated 3.4 million Ontarians who fall under the province’s high-priority groups, she said.
They include pregnant women, children between six months and five years of age, people under the age of 65 with chronic conditions, and those living in remote communities.
The province wants to add school-age children to the priority groups, but it doesn’t have enough vaccine right now to expand that list, Matthews said.
She said she doesn’t yet know how the pro athletes with the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors got the shot, or whether it was obtained through Medcan, a private clinic that received 3,000 doses of the vaccine.
“All of our professional health-care providers – the ones who are administering the vaccine – are working under exactly the same rules,” Matthews said.
“It doesn’t matter if it was through a private clinic or through a doctor’s office or through one of the public health unit clinics. The priority groups remain the same.”
A health employee in Alberta was fired after letting the Calgary Flames jump the swine flu shot queue, but the minister wouldn’t say what the consequences might be in Ontario.
“When it comes to the queue jumpers, that’s one of the questions that I’m exploring right now,” Matthews said.
Players and staff from both the NHL’s Leafs and the NBA’s Raptors received the vaccine, but spokesmen for the team say there was no preferential treatment.
“While all professional athletes are considered high risk to exposure and transmission of the flu due to excessive contact with other players, heavy travel requirements and public exposure, only certain players and staff have received the H1N1 vaccine,” Raptors spokesman Jim LaBumbard said in an email.
Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the teams, wouldn’t say how many players got the shot, and whether there were underlying health complications.
Players for the Ottawa Senators haven’t received the vaccine, said spokesman Phil Legault.
“We are waiting in line just like everyone else here in Ottawa,” he said from Ottawa. “They’ll wait in line until it’s their turn.”
It’s insulting that millionaire athletes got the shot while people are dying in Ontario, including the latest suspected victim of H1N1 who was just two months old, said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
“(People) shake their head with disbelief that in the province of Ontario, where we have a universal public health-care system, that people with deep pockets can still buy their way to the front of the line and that pro athletes somehow take precedence over kindergarten kids,” she said.
“That is absolutely outrageous and it has to stop.”
Doctors or health officials who provide the vaccine to people who aren’t on the priority list must be disciplined, she added.
As of Wednesday, there were 37 swine-flu related deaths in Ontario since April, including a two-month-old infant and two seniors, all from the London area.
“The death of this two-month-old infant is the first recorded in Ontario of a child under the age of one year,” the Middlesex-London Health Unit said in a release Wednesday.
Provincial health officials say 108 people have been hospitalized with H1N1, 65 of which are in intensive care.
About 500,000 people have been vaccinated in Ontario’s public health clinics and much of the 500,000 doses that were provided to doctors have been used, Matthews told the legislature Thursday.
Hospitals and other centres like nursing homes have another 350,000 doses that are being administered, she added.
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health has said the province will backstop health units that are running out of the H1N1 shot with an additional 189,000 doses of the regular vaccine it received over the week. It also has 86,800 doses of the unadjuvanted vaccine intended for pregnant women.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday that 1.8 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine will be shipped to the provinces next week, but Matthews said she still doesn’t know how much Ontario will get or when the new supplies will arrive.
