News Release
June 2, 2021

The City of Toronto will host its first city-wide telephone town hall today at 6 p.m. as part of its “VaxTO” campaign to connect residents with COVID-19 vaccination appointments and information.

The 90-minute event will provide Torontonians with an opportunity to ask questions related to the COVID-19 vaccination program directly to Mayor John Tory, Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Officer of Health, and Chief Matthew Pegg, General Manager of the Office of Emergency Management. Residents can sign up for the telephone town hall by texting “VACCINE” to 1-833-750-0888 or by listening via webstream at www.toronto.ca/vaccinetownhall.

Today’s telephone town hall will be the first of more than a dozen that will be hosted by the City through the VaxTO campaign in the coming months. Future town halls will be more localized in nature, and some will offer multilingual services. The VaxTO campaign will also use texts, emails, voice broadcasts, and targeted multilingual social media advertising to provide information to Toronto residents about when and how they can be vaccinated.

Since last Friday, nearly 650,000 broadcast voice message calls from Mayor John Tory were sent out to Toronto residents on cell phones and through landlines in priority neighbourhoods to invite them to attend the telephone town hall and to book their first dose vaccination appointments. Through this call out, 4,897 people took immediate action to be connected directly to the provincial booking line. As well, the City has received more than 4,000 texts to the text line since the campaign launched last Wednesday from residents looking to access a variety of resources including appointments, information and details on the telephone town hall.

Quotes:

 “We look forward to addressing as many of your COVID-19 vaccination questions as possible at today’s first city-wide telephone town hall, which I encourage all Toronto residents to join. This telephone town hall is just one of the numerous ways that the VaxTO campaign is helping to connect Torontonians to the information they need to get vaccinated so that we can all get back to doing the things we love in our city again.”

– Mayor John Tory

“Our VaxTO campaign is about building every possible bridge to vaccination. That means connecting directly with Torontonians. With our telephone town hall events, residents have the opportunity to ask any questions about vaccines they may have, and be directly connected to resources and information. It’s one more step in our commitment to getting Toronto vaccinated, and moving forward to the day when this pandemic is behind us.”

– Councillor Joe Cressy (Spadina-Fort York), Chair of the Toronto Board of Health

 

Toronto is home to more than 2.9 million people whose diversity and experiences make this great city Canada’s leading economic engine and one of the world’s most diverse and livable cities. As the fourth largest city in North America, Toronto is a global leader in technology, finance, film, music, culture and innovation, and consistently places at the top of international rankings due to investments championed by its government, residents and businesses. For more information visit the City’s website or follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Media Relations