Montreal deploys sound truck to encourage resident vaccinations

Montreal Public Health is encouraging more people who are 55 and older to get their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and they’re coming up with creative ways to get the message out.

Trucks will be roaming around different parts of Montreal, including the Côte-des-Neiges borough, to blast the message over a megaphone. The message will be in several different languages and it is telling residents to make an appointment and head to one of several pop-up vaccination clinics.

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Quebec turns to new ways to get Montrealers to COVID-19 vaccine clinics

“We’re going in the areas where we didn’t hit seventy-five per cent vaccination rate,” says Director of Vaccinations for CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, Lucie Tremblay.

“We’re doing several things, the truck being one, we put some posters in groceries where people are going and we’re even going door-to-door to encourage people to make an appointment and come and see us.”

She adds that translators will also be on-site to make the process as simple as possible.

Several sites will be used over the next couple of weeks. They include:

• Saint-Raymond Community Center: 5600 Ch. Upper Lachine
• Centre de Ressources Communautaire Côte-des-Neiges: 6767 Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges
• Notre-Dame-de-Grâce YMCA: 4335 Hampton Avenue
• Mountainview School: 7450 Côte Saint Luc Rd
• William Hingston Centre: 419 Rue Saint-Roch, Montréal

Appointments are mandatory. Residents are asked to call 514-734-9912.

According to Health Minister Christian Dubé, about 200,000 doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccine remain unused in Quebec.