News

As Canadians from coast to coast line up for hours awaiting H1N1 flu vaccinations amid continuing short supply and growing public concern, tens of thousands of patients registered with at least one private Toronto clinic can make appointments to receive shots for themselves and their family members.

Medcan, a private clinic in downtown Toronto, bills itself as a “preventive health-care clinic” and provides extensive medical, counselling and nutritional services, including its signature service: A comprehensive, head-to-toe “executive” medical checkup that costs upward of $2,000.

And now, the 40,000 patients in Medcan’s database are also eligible to make appointments for the sought-after H1N1 vaccine.

Medcan received a shipment of 3,000 shots of adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine from Toronto Public Health Friday, and the clinic’s medical director James Aw said phones have been ringing off the hook and e-mails piling up with requests for appointments.

For now, the clinic is only booking appointments for people considered at high risk of developing complications from the virus, which Dr. Aw said was part of the criteria public health demanded as a condition for supplying the vaccine. He said the clinic’s health-care workers and physicians are also being vaccinated now.

“We’re just trying to co-operate with public health in terms of inoculating Canadians,” he said. “They’ve deemed us as a medical clinic that should receive a limited supply of vaccine to help inoculate people at risk of developing severe disease from this H1N1. So we’re following guidelines, we do have to document who gets the vaccine, we have to report that back to public health.

“We’re just trying to get the vaccine into Canadian arms as soon as we can, and trying to prioritize that to patients that would benefit the most.”

Dr. Aw said they’re also waiting for doses of non-adjuvanted vaccine to give to pregnant women in their database. He added that the clinic is telling anxious clients that don’t fall into a high-risk category to get the vaccines through Toronto Public Health’s vaccination clinics.

An e-mail apparently sent out to members asked those not deemed high risk to “wait to contact us to book an appointment until you receive an e-mail notification from us.”

Dr. Aw said he doesn’t know how many more doses the clinic will receive, although they hope to know by next week.

“I just want to make sure that we avoid any preventable deaths,” he said, adding that demand for the vaccine has “far exceeded” the clinic’s 3,000 doses.

“We’re already into the H1N1 second wave. We have a touch point with some patients in the high-risk groups. It is my priority to get them immunized.”

A spokeswoman for Toronto Public Health couldn’t say Friday night how many private clinics in the city are giving out the vaccine.