Doctors say vaccine distribution inequitable

Province redirected Moderna shipment away from Niagara Region

Last week, as the local COVID-19 case count continued to skyrocket and deaths among the elderly spiked, the region’s acting medical officer of health began pushing the provincial government to send Niagara doses of life-saving vaccines.

Publicly, Dr. Mustafa Hirji took to Twitter to urge Premier Doug Ford’s government to send vaccines, and repeated his message in media interviews. But behind the scenes, Hirji was trying to get the provincial government to reverse a decision to redirect vaccines away from Niagara.

His public health department was scheduled to receive doses of the Moderna vaccine, which would have gone into the arms of Niagara long-term-care residents and front-line healthcare workers.

The doses were redirected elsewhere without explanation, prompting a flurry of phone calls from Hirji.

“We worked our channels to the provincial government. You’ll have to ask (the health) ministry where those doses went, but it seemed to coincide with the provincial government’s announcement that they wanted to get every longterm-care resident in Toronto, Peel, York and Windsor-essex vaccinated,” Hirji said. “Last week you saw that I was very vocal about the need to get vaccines to Niagara. So this is some of the context around that.”

While Niagara did receive doses of the Pfizer vaccine — inoculations for the region’s longterm-care residents began Wednesday morning — the Moderna doses aren’t coming.

“This does definitely slow down our efforts to vaccinate our most vulnerable residents,” said Hirji. He said he cannot discuss the size of the Moderna shipment because the issue has been deemed confidential by the Ontario Solicitor General’s office, which is in charge of vaccine security.

Hirji said to change the Moderna decision now would mean taking the vaccine away from another community, something he doesn’t think the province will do.

Nevertheless, the decision prompted the Wednesday publication of an open letter by Niagara Health’s top physicians to Niagara community leaders, urging them to insist the province send more vaccines, and restore the “unfairly taken away” Moderna shipment.

“It has been particularly disheartening for us in Niagara to see that we are not being treated equitably with other areas in the province. There are 32 longterm-care homes in Niagara and not one health-care worker, not one resident received the vaccine prior to today. In contrast, Windsor has 19 longterm-care homes and has already vaccinated all of them,” says the letter. “Shockingly, some people in other jurisdictions have received their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine before a single dose made its way into our community. Our older adults and health-care workers deserve better.

“We can administer vaccines as quickly as they are provided. Volunteers are lining up to support this initiative. All we need are vaccines.”

Hirji said in early December when the initial and limited doses of Pfizer vaccine — the first to be approved for use by Health Canada — arrived in Ontario, the provincial government had to make a “riskbased” decision on where the first doses would go. Regions like Toronto and Peel were already in red or lockdown zones of the provincial COVID-19 restriction plans and were targeted first for vaccines.

“That was understandable,” Hirji said. “Niagara was in orange at that time. So that decision made sense.”

Since then the COVID-19 situation in Niagara has rapidly deteriorated. Since Boxing Day, more than 100 people with the virus, most of them long-termcare residents, have died. Outbreaks in those homes have spread quickly, infecting hundreds of residents and staff.

So while Hirji said the initial vaccine decision by Queen’s Park made sense, they don’t anymore. Niagara, he said, is not being treated fairly.

“We are now in the same ballpark as places like Toronto and Hamilton,” Hirji said. “To make matters worse, we now know that in some jurisdictions to pad their (vaccination) numbers, low-risk health-care staff are getting their first doses instead of those doses going to a place like Niagara, which has many people at high risk.”

Those low-risk people have received their second doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines before some Niagara longterm-care residents can get their first shots.

Niagara Health physicians circulated their letter online Wednesday afternoon, prompting a quick reaction from at least two local MPPS.

St. Catharines NDP Jennie Stevens and Niagara Falls NDP MPP Wayne Gates both issued statements calling on the Ford government to send Moderna vaccines to the region immediately.

“We ask you to reconsider this choice to divert the Moderna vaccine from Niagara and instead expedite the delivery of this life-saving medication, which would’ve gone to the most vulnerable population in care,” wrote Stevens. “Our public health officials and front line staff have taken over long term care homes that have been left to struggle in Niagara, and they are risking burnout and further loss of staff that exceeds over 400 members already in Niagara.”

Gates said the longer the province delays sending vaccines to Niagara, the greater to risk to residents.

“Niagara has horrible outbreaks in long-term care homes that can be stopped if we are given our fair share of the vaccines — both of Moderna and Pfizer. Families deserve this, workers deserve to be safe and the rest of our community — especially our seniors — needs to know when they’ll be receiving the vaccine.”