Families in personal lockdown pine for vaccine
EDMONTON — Health officials in Alberta are facing a set of tricky life-and-death decisions as they prepare to announce the details of the next phases of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout.
Organized groups such as teachers and paramedics lobbied to be near the front of the line, and paramedics got their wish Monday. Others at risk in the community also have hopes primed, but watch quietly from the isolation of their living rooms. They are longing for a treatment that will secure freedom, not just for them, but often for their entire family.
“It would lift a whole layer of anxiety. Probably the kids would go back to school. They wouldn’t have to be so cloistered,” said Donna Meen, an Edmonton grandmother hoping her daughter will be near the front of the next line.
Her daughter has several health conditions that make her high risk. Because of that, the family hunkered down, and Meen is supervising online schooling for her grandchildren, even though one is struggling without the classroom environment.
Vaccination for the mother would be huge, said Meen. “It would be really good for her mental health and for everyone around her.”
Deciding who gets scarce vaccines will only get harder as Alberta and other province moves past the first highpriority groups. It’s emotional, fraught with heartache and complicated by imperfect science. It’s not something immunologists and public health officials are used to.
When the first shipments of vaccine arrived, the priorities were clear and seem to be generally agreed with. The vaccine went first to health-care workers, especially those with skills in short supply for intensive care units, and those in long-term or supportive care, where 66 per cent of the deaths in Alberta and the worst of the isolation have taken place.
Care home residents, home care nursing staff and COVID19 unit staff were next. Adults 75 and older living in the community are scheduled for February, as vaccine is available.
But what then? What about immunocompromised individuals for whom the efficacy of the vaccine is unknown? Can their immediate family get vaccinated early, and will that offer enough protection? And how much of the scarce vaccine should go to essential workers, such as teachers, versus going to people with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe illness?
On Friday, Alberta Health spokesman Tom McMillan said Phase 2 priorities have not yet been set. “We will make those decisions later in the coming weeks, and let Albertans know as soon as possible. This would include information on how to access the vaccine.”
These are difficult tradeoffs. “We’re having to make decisions that we’ve never really had to make before. We’ve always had a fridge full of measles vaccine or … whooping cough,” said Shannon MacDonald, assistant professor in the University of Alberta Faculty of Nursing, who is also on the Alberta Advisory Committee on Immunization.
One of the challenges is that the science is not finished, said MacDonald. The vaccines were tested on healthy, mostly younger adults.
They were not tested on people with compromised immune systems, in children or in pregnant women. But some health-care workers are pregnant. So, they consult their doctor and choose the lesser risk — take a vaccine not tested for their demographic, or risk getting the disease itself.