Ottawa doctor offers early access to boosters at latest Jabapalooza as Omicron concern grows

An Ottawa family doctor is bucking the provincial timeline for booster booking, citing the immediate value of those third shots as COVID-19 cases rise, the Omicron variant looms and people head into the holiday season.

Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth is hosting another one of her “Jabapalooza” vaccination clinics on Sunday, offering 366 available doses to her own patients aged 18 and older and to people 40 and older who were vaccinated at Jabapaloozas in May and June, with some 30 people on a waiting list.

Ontario announced Friday that the 18-plus population would be allowed to book boosters starting Jan. 4 and had already set Dec. 13 as the eligibility date for the 50-and-older crowd.

“We’re just doing it three weeks earlier than Ontario. But we’re doing it three weeks earlier with … the blessing of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization,” Kaplan-Myrth said. “And we are doing it three weeks earlier than Ontario because Ontario is just being lazy about not wanting to open it up right now for everybody.”

(This newspaper has reached out to provincial officials for comment on the reason for waiting to extend booster eligibility to the entire adult population, but hasn’t yet received a response.)

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, said Friday the province needed to prioritize who it expected to have the most severe outcomes and called the provincial booster timeline a “phased, staged process,” but said they were looking at ways to enhance the capacity to deliver vaccines.

Last week, NACI advised that adults 18-plus may be offered boosters at least six months after completing their two-dose series, “with consideration of jurisdictional and individual risks,” and strongly recommended it in the case of those 50 and older.

Kaplan-Myrth said everyone booked for Sunday’s clinic was six weeks past their last dose and all were very eager for a booster before the holidays. Meanwhile, she had a supply of vaccines that were going to expire. “So, if we don’t do this now, that vaccine would have gone in the garbage.”

Ontario is facing rising case numbers and the threat of the Omicron variant, the doctor pointed out.

“All of the parents and educators, childcare providers, all those essential workers, grocers, everybody that we gave those vaccines to back in the spring … like we gave it to them for a reason,” Kaplan-Myrth said. “They have to be out there interacting with other people in their day-to-day lives for their work. And why on earth wouldn’t we give them the third dose, knowing that their immunity is waning and that this is their best chance to stay healthy?”

She pointed as well to new laboratory study data from Pfizer-BioNTech suggesting a third dose could compensate for a blunted two-dose vaccine response to the Omicron variant.

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