IH to assign COVID-19 vaccination locations once appointment bookings begin

KAMLOOPS — As of March 8, eligible seniors will be able to call a dedicated phone line to schedule their COVID-19 vaccination appointments.

Interior Health says it will be publicizing the location of vaccination clinics in the coming days.

The City of Kamloops announced earlier this week that the McArthur Island Sport and Event Centre and the Tournament Capital Centre would be set up as mass vaccination clinics.

Interim Vice President of Pandemic Response with Interior Health Karen Bloemink says IH will determine the best location for individuals as they book their appointments.

“We’re hoping that the dialogue that occurs then between individuals who need to book a clinic and our call centre will land people into an immunization clinic that best meets their needs,” Bloemink said. “As we expand our planning into our mass immunization clinics, those plans and locations of clinics will also be publicly available through our website and other means.”

Meantime, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Kamloops increased last week to 124 cases from February 21-27. That is an increase of 46 from the previous week.

Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Albert de Villiers says there is no specific cause for this increase.

“We haven’t seen a specific workplace or a specific school at this stage,” he said. “We know the numbers have been a little bit higher in Kamloops related to the outbreaks in all the long term care facilities and we know there was some increase of cases where there were vulnerable populations as well, the people that are marginally housed and the homeless connected to the shelter, so we know there were some issues, but lots of that has been slowing down, so we hope that we’ll be going in the right direction.”