DETROIT – As vaccination rates in the state of Michigan have started to lag, neighbors across the border are asking for help.
David Musyj is the CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital.
“In Windsor demand outweighs supply while a mile away supply outstrips demand,” said Musyj.
Windsor has about 3,000 frontline workers that are allowed to come across the border and have been since the start of the pandemic, but they’re not allowed to get their shots here in the United States.
The numbers vary but since the rollout of the vaccine thousands, potentially tens of thousands of Michigan’s vaccine doses have been wasted.
Canadian health experts have offered up a plan, which is to make the Ambassador Bridge a vaccine clinic.
“There’s a landing area there. We could take over that landing area as a vaccination center where Canadians could drive over, get vaccinated, wait 15 minutes, not even get out of their vehicle, turn around and come back to Canada, and we could do that all day, every day,” said Musyj. “We need the COVID-19 vaccine. We need the Michigan politicians to be saying, this is very important to us, just like Windsor was here for us in March, April last year, we got to be here for Windsor.”
With the border still closed at the federal level the hands of Michigan’s state politicians are pretty tied, but President Joe Biden did make a promise about six weeks ago that the United States would start giving vaccines out to other countries -- particularly North American ones -- to help prevent further spread of the virus.
So far the White House has not made good on that promise.