Prisoners could get vaccinated before health-care workers
Correctional Service Canada to begin vaccinating older, medically vulnerable federal inmates Friday
Some inmates at Warkworth Institution could potentially be the first in the Peterborough region to get the COVID-19 vaccine, while paramedics and other health-care professionals will remain at risk of contracting the virus.
Correctional Service of Canada announced Wednesday it will begin COVID-19 vaccination of older, medically vulnerable federal inmates on Friday, with about 600 inmates getting vaccinated in the first phase across Canada.
Peterborough Public Health is not expecting to get any vaccine until late January.
Craig Jones, commander of emergency management and operations for Peterborough
County-City Paramedics, is puzzled why inmates could be vaccinated before local frontline health-care workers like paramedics.
“I mean, obviously we’re wellaware that some people don’t display symptoms, so there’s different levels of protection that we teach our paramedics to follow. If a person doesn’t know whether they actually have symptoms, they would screen negative,” Jones said.
If a person paramedics are treating screens negative for the virus, paramedics wear less personal protective equipment than they would if someone had screened positive.
“So, that’s a way that a paramedic could unfortunately become infected, through no fault of the person that gave them the infection, because they
didn’t know they were infected,” Jones said.
Since the start of the pandemic, Jones said many infection control practices have been taught to paramedics.
“We always cleaned after a call, but we’re definitely more diligent in our cleaning now.
Our paramedics are also now wearing different masks; they wear a full, reusable mask with cartridges, as opposed to an N95 mask which is the paper mask,” Jones said.
The pandemic has been hard on paramedics and the general public, he said.
“The mental health effects are going to be felt for years to come,” Jones said. “There’s lots of isolation out there and there’s lots of people struggling in many different ways.”
Adapting to COVID -19 has been easier for paramedics who are new to the field, but it’s been challenging for paramedics who have years of experience, he said.
“They’re having to learn a lot more than they’d ever thought they’d have to learn in the 20 years previous,” Jones said.
As the number of COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the province, paramedics are encouraging people to socially distance and stay in their own athome bubbles, he said.