By Cecilia Nasmith
Cobourg Chief Administrative Officer Tracey Vaughan said the numbers are rolling up on the vaccine roll-out.
As of March 26, Vaughan said at this week's committee-of-the-whole meeting of council, 1,838,000 shots have been administered in Ontario. And since the provincial web portal was introduced March 15, 583,000 appointments have been made for vaccinations.
Some 327 pharmacies are offering vaccinations, with 350 soon to be added across the province. By the end of April, Vaughan said, the target is to have 1,500 pharmacies offering this service.
April will bring Phase 2 of the vaccine roll-out to inoculate those aged 60 to 79, people with specific health conditions, some primary caregiver, people who live in congregant settings, and people who live in so-called hot spots with high rates of hospitalization and death, as well as essential workers who cannot work from home.
All of it dependent on vaccine supplies, Vaughan stressed.
“We can only move as quickly as the vaccine doses allow us to do.”
Supplies to the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge region – which is doing relatively well – may not be as plentiful as supplies to areas that are experiencing much higher numbers.
Though Northumberland Hills Hospital no longer offers the vaccinations at the Cobourg Community Centre, health unit staff are now there four days a week – Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
The clinics are running quite well – in part, at least, due to the many Rotary Club volunteers – and they are getting a lot of positive feedback.
And that's in spite of some interesting issues behind the scenes such as the fact that the needles sometimes come unassembled and the vaccines sometimes arrived unreconstituted. This makes for a lot of scrambling behind the scenes as the nurses do this work in addition to administering the shots.
“Now there's a medical directive in place where EMSs can give vaccines,” Vaughan reported.
Having the capacity to have Emergency Medical Service workers as part of the team may mean that people who are not able to attend a clinic can be vaccinated in their homes.
While the CCC and Venture 13 are the only municipal buildings open at this time, Vaughan said they are considering under what circumstances some members of the community might be able to enter the lobby to access services not otherwise available to them remotely.
Mayor John Henderson reminded council that Medical Officer of Health Dr. Ian Gemmill is only on the job in an interim capacity until the new Medical Officer of Health Dr. Rachel Bocking can start in early April. And he gave both doctors credit for taking local concerns to the provincial command table in a bid for more vaccine – because although the region's COVID-19 numbers may not be as dire as they are in some areas, the area does have demographics that are disproportionately elderly.
