To support Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine efforts, the Society co-sponsored an innovative vaccine distribution model in Peel Region. The hockey hub model has seen thousands of Peel residents vaccinated so far and can scale up as supply becomes available to vaccinate as many as 10,000 people per day.
Brampton’s CAA Centre was selected for the program because of the disproportionate number of COVID cases among Peel residents. The Peel site builds on the hockey hub model developed by public health physician Dr. Ian Arra in the Bruce Grey community. The hockey hub model optimizes flow-through by assigning non-clinical staff to attend to as many tasks as possible. Clinical staff focus on the physical administration of vaccines. This allows five clinical staff to administer 450 vaccine doses per hour, about four times the rate of most mass-vaccination clinics. The model is now also in use in communities across Ontario, including Halton and Haldimand-Norfolk.