In Scarborough, an 'endless spiral' of people line up early — very early — for the hope of a second dose - Toronto Star

In the two hours he waited there, Richard Diamond never managed to see the entrance of the Warden Hilltop Community Centre from his place in line. Not too long after he arrived, he stopped being able to see the end of the line, too.

Diamond was one of thousands who arrived at the Scarborough community centre’s pop-up vaccine clinic Tuesday morning. As one of the first pop-ups to offer second doses to anyone in Toronto, regardless of postal code, it was quickly overwhelmed by residents hungry for a shot at becoming fully vaccinated before summertime. Social media was awash with images of Warden Hilltop’s mammoth line, which had been growing since midnight, eventually blanketing the neighbourhood, curling around in all directions for about two kilometres.

In the face of “unprecedented demand” for second doses, now available to Ontarians in hot spots, including Toronto, the city of Toronto said in a press release Tuesday it will be adding an additional 30,000 Moderna vaccine appointments to its mass immunization clinics next week.

The initial 60,000 Toronto appointments, created Monday, were gone within hours, leaving pop-ups, like Warden Hilltop, and some pharmacies as the only path to full vaccination for Torontonians who missed their chance this week.

“We are doing everything we can as city with the supply we have from the other governments to help people get vaccinated,” Mayor John Tory said in the release.

Diamond arrived at Warden Hilltop 40 minutes before it opened Tuesday morning. He hasn’t seen his father, in Winnipeg, in months, and won’t be able to until he’s fully vaccinated — the two-week mandatory quarantine makes a visit impossible. Unfortunately for him, thousands got to the clinic before him.

“It was crazy,” said Diamond, who left after about two hours of waiting. “The lineup was chaotic; people were all over the place — they were zig-zagging through residential streets and back to the main thoroughfare.”

Diamond was summoned to Warden Hilltop — his second attempt at getting vaccinated in 24 hours to end in disappointment — by a tweet he saw advertising Toronto East Health Network (TEHN) pop-ups. The posting seemed promising. Anyone 12 years or older who lives in Toronto could come in from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for a second dose.

Twenty-five minutes after opening, TEHN tweeted that all doses had been allocated and it was “closing the line.” Diamond hung on for another hour before taking off, having lost all hope.

“We appreciate that eligible individuals are eager to receive their second dose,” Wolf Klassen, vice-president of program support at Michael Garron Hospital, part of TEHN, told the Star in a statement Tuesday. “Our mobile team goes to great efforts to ensure those waiting in line at our pop-ups receive their vaccine.”

Wincy Ko and her daughters, Grace, 17, and Elizabeth, 14, were among the initial lucky 2,000. Arriving at 7:30 a.m., they eventually got a card securing their spot — 1,950th in line. Seven hours later, the trio all had their shots.

Dr. Liz Muggah, president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, said her reaction to seeing Warden Hilltop’s line is that the situation might have been helped if her and her peers had been given vaccines.

“Our college has been saying, from the beginning, that family doctors should be included in vaccination,” she said. “We’re experts at vaccination, our patients trust us, we know they want to be vaccinated by us, and yet the primary care sector hasn’t been fully leveraged in the roll out.”

Muggah said there’s an equity argument to be made too. Not everyone can wait in line all day, she said.

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“What happens to people who can’t do that?” she said. “And what happens to people who need to see a trusted source first, to have their questions answered? That’s your family doctor.”

Sophie Cohen woke her twins, Devlin and Suki, 15, up at 5 a.m. hoping to get them vaccinated at Warden Hilltop. Cohen said she tried “many, many times” to get her family second-dose appointments on the provincial booking system Monday — but “that was a disaster, it just goes absolutely nowhere and kicks people out randomly.”

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Cohen said her kids, concerned with the more transmissible Delta variant, want to be fully vaccinated so they can feel safe this summer.

“My kids have been doing all the right things for the past year and a bit,” she said. “They’re very eager to get back to life and be able to do at least some activities over the summer, like sports.”

Arriving at the pop-up just after 7 a.m., Cohen said she figured they would have “plenty of time.”

In nearly an hour there, they never even found the end of the line.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” she said. “It just seemed to be a spiral, an endless spiral of people. Just when you would think there would be some sort of end to it, it kept going and going and winding around all these streets.”

Ben Cohen is a Toronto-based staff reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bcohenn

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In Scarborough, an 'endless spiral' of people line up early — very early — for the hope of a second dose - Toronto Star
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