TORONTO - Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews vowed Thursday to investigate whether celebrity athletes jumped the queue for the swine flu shot while other groups are being forced to wait as the province's supply dwindles.
She said she shares the outrage sparked by reports that professional hockey and basketball players in Toronto got the shot even though the province doesn't have enough yet to vaccinate school-age children.
"I don't care who you are, how rich you are, how famous you are," she said.
"If you're not in the priority group, get out of the line and let the people who are in the priority groups get their vaccination."
Ontario is still expected to run out of the regular H1N1 vaccine at the end of the week due to Ottawa's dramatic supply slowdown, she said.
The province has enough vaccine to immunize 2.2 million people, which is intended only for the estimated 3.4 million Ontarians who fall under the province's high-priority groups, she said.
They include pregnant women, children between six months and five years of age, people who care for infants and other people who can't get the vaccine, people under the age of 65 with chronic conditions and those living in remote communities.
The government wants to add school-age children as a priority group, but it doesn't have enough vaccine right now to expand that list, Matthews said.
She said she doesn't yet know how the pro athletes with the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors got the shot, or whether it was obtained through Medcan, a private clinic that received 3,000 doses of the vaccine.
"All of our professional health-care providers -- the ones who are administering the vaccine -- are working under exactly the same rules," Matthews said.
"It doesn't matter if it was through a private clinic or through a doctor's office or through one of the public health unit clinics. The priority groups remain the same."
A health employee in Alberta was fired after letting the Calgary Flames jump the swine flu shot queue, but the minister wouldn't say what the consequences might be in Ontario.
"When it comes to the queue jumpers, that's one of the questions that I'm exploring right now," Matthews said.
A review is needed, but not right now when the province is focusing all its efforts into vaccinating the priority groups, said Dr. Arlene King, Ontario's chief medical officer of health.
"At this point in time, I am simply reminding providers that they need to follow the priority group list," she said Thursday.
Some players and staff from both the NHL's Leafs and the NBA's Raptors received the vaccine, but spokesmen for the team said there was no preferential treatment.
"While all professional athletes are considered high risk to exposure and transmission of the flu due to excessive contact with other players, heavy travel requirements and public exposure, only certain players and staff have received the H1N1 vaccine," Raptors spokesman Jim LaBumbard said in an email.
Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the teams, wouldn't say how many players got the shot, and whether there were underlying health complications.
Players for the Ottawa Senators haven't received the vaccine, said spokesman Phil Legault.
"We are waiting in line just like everyone else here in Ottawa," he said from Ottawa. "They'll wait in line until it's their turn."
It's insulting that millionaire athletes got the shot while people are dying in Ontario, including the latest suspected victim of H1N1 who was just two months old, said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
"(People) shake their head with disbelief that in the province of Ontario, where we have a universal public health-care system, that people with deep pockets can still buy their way to the front of the line and that pro athletes somehow take precedence over kindergarten kids," she said.
"That is absolutely outrageous and it has to stop."
Doctors or health officials who provide the vaccine to people who aren't on the priority list must be disciplined, she added.
Ontario has seen 37 swine-flu related deaths since April, including the two-month-old infant and two seniors, all from the London area.
Local health authorities said the infant's death was the first recorded in Ontario of a child under a year old.
Provincial health officials say 123 people have been hospitalized with H1N1, up from 108 on Wednesday, 65 of which are in intensive care.
About 500,000 people have been vaccinated in Ontario's public health clinics and much of the 500,000 doses that were provided to doctors have been used, Matthews told the legislature Thursday.
Hospitals and other centres like nursing homes have another 350,000 doses that are being administered, she added.
Public health units are expected to exhaust their supplies this week, said King.
The province will backstop health units that are running out of the H1N1 shot with an additional 189,000 doses of the regular vaccine it received this week. It also has 86,800 doses of the unadjuvanted vaccine intended for pregnant women.
She disputed reports that much of the province's vaccine supply isn't getting into people's arms, but sitting in warehouses and refrigerators.
"There's nothing sitting in Ontario," she said. "Everything is either moving or going into people's arms at this point."
Federal officials have said that one million doses of the adjuvanted vaccine and about 900,000 doses of the unadjuvanted vaccine will be shipped next week, but King said she still doesn't know how much Ontario will get or when the new supplies will arrive.
If there's no new supply early next week, public clinics may have to shut down, said Allison Stuart, assistant deputy minister of the ministry's public health division.
Alberta was forced to suspend immunization efforts when demand for the shots far exceeded the province's limited supplies. Vaccination clinics reopened Thursday after a five-day shutdown.
Supply of the vaccine hit a snag last week after Quebec manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline switched from making the adjuvanted version of the vaccine -- which contains a booster compound -- to making special unadjuvanted batches for pregnant women.
The changeover apparently slowed production of the H1N1 vaccine more than the drugmaker had expected.
