Interior Health says casinos might be suitable sites to vaccinate the general public against COVID-19, when that time comes.

Chief medical health officer, Dr. Albert De Villiers, was asked for his thoughts on some municipal leaders in the region planning to lobby the provincial government on that matter.

He says IH is looking at all options for vaccination clinics.

“We haven’t got it nailed it down exactly where we’re going to give the vaccine, but we can look at different options. And if there’s a big place available with electricity, and computer connectivity for our nurses and everything is in place, I think we can really look at different options and anything is possible.”

IH interim vice president of pandemic response, Karen Bloemink, says determining where to vaccinate the general public is an important step to plan for.

“We are certainly starting to think about that now, and be looking for options where we can have the space to still allow us to do this safely but put a high number of people through at one time.”

Kamloops councillor Bill Sarai explains casinos have lots of space, lots of parking and that they’re clean, and points out they’ve also been closed now for 10 months. Sarai is also a director-at-large with the Southern Interior Local Government Association, which will be asking the province to consider using casinos as widespread vaccination sites.

Casinos in B.C. have now been closed for more than 10 months, with no signs of reopening anytime soon.