McMaster’s Waterloo campus assists with vaccine clinic launch

Faculty, staff and students of McMaster’s Waterloo campus are helping ramping up the launch of an onsite vaccination clinic, together with other community partners in downtown Kitchener.

The vaccination clinic will immunize between 1,000 to 2,000 people a day, seven days a week until the end of August, using the Pfizer vaccine.

“This means a lot to all of us suffering through this pandemic – those who are at risk and in memory and respect for those who lost their lives to this virus — that we are being part of the solution,” said Margo Mountjoy, regional assistant dean of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine’s Waterloo Regional Campus.

About 100 students, medical residents, faculty, staff and volunteers from the regional campus are working at the clinic.

Helping launch the new clinic was Joe Lee, associate professor of family medicine at McMaster, who leads the Centre for Family Medicine located in the Waterloo campus building in downtown Kitchener.

While most of the doctors participating in the clinic are part of McMaster, a University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy team is handling vaccine vials. Each vaccine vial can hold up to six doses.

The clinic is part of the province’s Phase 2 vaccination rollout plan, which also allows pharmacy students, technicians and fully-qualified pharmacists to administer vaccines.

“This is very exciting to be involved and see McMaster collaborate with the University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy, the University of Waterloo in general, the Region of Waterloo Public Health, the Kitchener Downtown Community Health Centre and the Andrew Street Family Health Centre,” said Mountjoy.

“This is a very unique opportunity for an educational institution to partner in a pandemic.”

The vaccination clinic is located at the University of Waterloo building at the corner of King and Victoria in Kitchener and people must pre-register online with the Region of Waterloo.