Care home uses lottery to pick recipients
SHA CEO says six doses given to care home would have gone to waste otherwise
The NDP is pointing to a COVID -19 vaccine lottery at a Regina seniors' facility as a symptom of “chaos” in Saskatchewan's immunization effort.
But management at the home said the process went as smoothly as could be, despite a last-minute change of plan that led staff to draw names from a hat.
Bev Desautels, administrator of Qu'appelle House in Regina, said she requested enough doses to vaccinate all 75 residents and staff at the facility on Tuesday. But public health alerted her that morning they wouldn't be vaccinating 15 assisted-living residents. The vaccine was only for those in longterm care, a higher level of care.
Yet there was enough vaccine left in vials already opened to make up six doses. Public health nurses didn't want to waste the precious fluid, so they asked Desautels to pick six assisted-living residents to get the shot, she recalls. She'd have to leave nine unvaccinated and still at risk.
“They asked me to choose, and I said, no, I'm not going to choose,” she recalls. “So I put the names in a hat and the nurses pulled out names.”
Some assisted-living residents were left fuming by the process. On an NDP conference call with reporters, Wendell Lindstron said his name didn't get picked. He's feeling disappointed and at risk of serious illness.
“I've had two open heart surgeries and my lungs are congested and so on, so I really need a vaccine,” he said.
“If I don't get it, and I get the COVID, the outlook isn't very good for me.”
Harold Olson was one of the lucky ones. But he still feels the process was unfair, calling it “a huge mistake” to distinguish between assisted-living and longterm care residents.
“When we got to have a lottery to do stuff like this, I don't think that's right,” he said.
As the residents spoke to reporters, an announcement came through the phone alerting them about an upcoming bingo game. For NDP deputy leader Nicole Sarauer, it's a sign of how all the residents at Qu'appelle House are one community — eating, mingling and living together. The assisted-living residents are all over 85 and have complicated health conditions. Sarauer called it a “horrible situation.”
“There is no separation between the residents who received the vaccine and residents who did not receive the vaccine,” she said.
She framed the confusion at Qu'appelle House as a sign of a wider problem — a confusing and disorganized vaccine rollout. She blamed the government for poor leadership.
“Every time they fail to do the work that they're supposed to do, they leave the people delivering on the front lines scrambling,” Sarauer said.
“What happened at Qu'appelle House yesterday is just one example of what can go wrong when the government fails to plan.”
Saskatchewan Health Authority CEO Scott Livingstone said there will be a review about what happened at Qu'appelle House. But he called the lottery an example of staff “thinking on the ground” to find an innovative solution.
“With the frozen vaccine, we can't take it back with the Pfizer product, and we didn't want to waste it,” he said.
“The six individuals that did receive it on the assisted-living side were and are in that Phase 1 group. They just weren't in the group that was intended to be vaccinated that day.”
For her part, Desautels thinks the vaccine process at Qu'appelle House was a success.
“The day was not disorganized at all,” said Desautels. “I would say it ran as smoothly as it possibly could.”