Image Credit: CFJC Today / Jill Sperling

By Jill Sperling

COVID-19 VACCINE

Kamloops pharmacies to begin using AstraZeneca vaccine

Apr 9, 2021 | 4:37 PM

KAMLOOPS — A third vaccine will be available to Interior residents early next week. AstraZeneca will be rolled out through pharmacies for people aged 55-to-65.

A shipment of 200 AstraZeneca vaccine doses arrived at Manshadi Pharmacy in Kamloops Friday (April 9) morning.

“We are excited to be part of this work in B.C. and we are excited to be a part of it,” said pharmacist Missagh Manshadi.

Pharmacies had already begun using AstraZeneca in the Lower Mainland. Manshadi Pharmacy will begin administering doses on Monday (April 12). Doses will be administered on a first-come, first-serve basis.

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“We’re going to arrange that we will do at least 30 vaccinations per day,” Manshadi said. “We’re going to do it in a way that is social distancing and following the guidelines.”

Manshadi expects to receive 200 doses each week. Appointments will not be limited to the pharmacy’s regular customers.

“Because of the population that we serve and where we are located in the North Shore, we decided that instead of people going online and registering, they can just phone our pharmacy and we’ll register them.”

So far, only Pfizer and Moderna are available at the vaccination clinics in Kamloops.

The first shipments of AstraZeneca in Interior Health have been distributed to Vernon, Kelowna and Kamloops.

“There will be more shipments in the future, but for the first shipment we looked at where we’ve got the most numbers in the sense of cases and hospitalizations,” explained Interior Health’s Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Albert de Villiers. “So, where we’ve currently got the outbreaks are in Kelowna and in Vernon and we know Kamloops has had cases historically as well.”

A list of pharmacies offering the vaccine is available here.

The one-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine is expected to arrive in the coming weeks, but no population has been identified for this vaccine as of yet.

“We don’t know exactly by the end of April where we will be, depending on how much of the other vaccines we get,” de Villiers said. “Maybe by then it will be in the general clinics, maybe we’ll use it in pharmacies, maybe we’ll use it for targeted, like we talked before, with the first responders and the teachers. We don’t know. It really depends on the rest of the vaccine.”

A vaccination campaign for frontline workers is still on pause as a link to blood clots with the AstraZeneca vaccine is investigated.