Four pharmacies who scheduled vaccine appointments cancelled after an error in Alberta, Canada affecting around 1,500 appointments.
Recently, parents of children aged five to 11 in Alberta were informed that they can book first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for that age group.
Alberta is scheduled to receive 394,000 pediatric Pfizer doses by the end of this week, enough for every child in this age group to get their first shot. The first shipment arrived Tuesday.
Health Canada approved the child-safe version of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for this age group last week.
Vaccines will be offered at 120 Alberta Health Services (AHS) clinics but parents can pre-register online to save time.
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A handful of pharmacies are also giving them out where AHS sites are not convenient, and children on First Nations reserves can visit a local public health clinic.
However, four pharmacies — three in Edmonton and one in Airdrie — were incorrectly listed, according to Alberta Health. In both of these cities, Pfizer’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccine is only being offered at Alberta Health Services’ sites.
Michael Francoeur, spokesperson for Alberta Health, said incorrect locations were removed from Alberta Health’s system within an hour. He apologized to those who need to reschedule.
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“We are aware of four pharmacies that incorrectly opened pediatric vaccine appointments in the Alberta vaccine booking system early (Wednesday) morning …
The four pharmacies are in the process of cancelling these appointments and notifying individuals,” he said in an email statement.
Jason Kenney said, one of the province’s primary concerns was the number of unvaccinated adults needing hospital and intensive care: “We don’t have anything like the same kind of risk for pressure on the health-care system emanating from children in this age bracket.”
464 COVID-19 cases were newly reported in Alberta Wednesday and four more people have died from the disease.
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By Wednesday there were 5,033 active cases in the province, including 1,132 the Edmonton Zone and 1,836 in the Calgary Zone.
A total of 470 patients were hospitalized for COVID-19 with 97 of them in ICU.
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