Saskatchewan to discontinue drive-thru and booked vaccine appointments

The province is discontinuing its drive-thru and booked appointments for COVID-19 vaccines.

Monday, the province announced vaccines will be available at planned summer events, post-secondary campuses, grocery stores, pow wows, provincial parks and recreations areas and community centres. The changes are expected to be finalized by Aug. 8.

The phone number 1-833-SASKVAX — which gives people access to information on how to book their vaccine — will also be discontinued.

Health Minister Paul Merriman said a strain on staffing levels and a lack of interest from unvaccinated people led to the decision to change the rollout plan.

“We’ve always said we need to get our SHA (Saskatchewan Health Authority) employees back to where they were. We reorganized our whole organization within health to be able to do contact tracing, to be able to do testing and certainly to administer those vaccines,” Merriman said at a grand opening for a Saskatoon youth shelter.

Transitioning to an outreach model is meant to help drive up the second dose uptake and help find exactly where the unvaccinated population is.

“We need to start micro-targeting those groups,” Merriman said, highlighting the north and small areas in Saskatchewan cities with low vaccination rates.

“To do mass vaccinations for people at long drive-ins — those days are behind us — we want to make sure we target everything to specific areas and specific demographics.”

Some Saskatchewan pharmacies will continue with COVID-19 vaccination appointments.

Merriman would like to see far more people aged 40 and under seek out vaccines.

According the province’s daily update on Monday, 61 per cent of people aged 40 to 49 are fully vaccinated. That number drops to 52 per cent for people aged 30 to 39 and all the way down to 39 per cent for people aged 12-17.

“The Saskatchewan Health Authority continues to encourage all residents to be immunized with both doses as soon as they are eligible,” Saskatchewan Health Authority emergency operation centre vaccine chief Sheila Anderson said in a provincial news release.

“As much progress as we’ve made towards immunizing the province we want to remind people that COVID-19 is still here and we will see cases throughout the summer, especially for unvaccinated individuals.”

The province is urging people to be vaccinated before going on vacation.

Starting Monday, the daily clinic locations will be highlighted in the daily COVID-19 news release.

Here are the locations for booked appointment locations, drive-thru and walk-in clinics for Monday and Tuesday: