Ford government looking to ensure that those who got mixed vaccine doses can travel abroad

Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliot and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones wrote to the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and other officials of the Canadian government regarding the issue last Sunday, reports CTV News.

"We ask the Government of Canada to work with the WHO to update its guidance to international partners that mixing vaccines should be internationally accepted as a complete vaccine regimen," they wrote.

The Ontario government and other provinces have given their population the option of taking one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and one of the Moderna vaccine. Additionally, Ontarians and Canadian residents in other provinces also had the option of taking the first dose of the Moderna vaccine and the second dose of AstraZeneca.

Due to the shifting income of vaccine inventory and the fear of a rare blood clot linked to the AstraZeneca shot, Ontario and other provinces allowed people to have mixed vaccine doses this year.

Elliot and Jones argued in their letter at one point that some European countries have taken similar approaches to a mixed-dose vaccine distribution. They stated that Ontario is looking forward to speaking with government representatives of those countries and the United States.

To date, Ontario has given out at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to eighty percent of its residents and has fully vaccinated sixty-seven percent.