Premier, take a good look at our COVID-19 cases

Premier Ford, we know you’re out there somewhere. We know you can hear us here in Niagara.

We are sinking deeper and deeper into the COVID-19 quicksand here. Our neighbours and family members are dying at an alarming rate — 121 of us have died since Christmas Day, in case you hadn’t heard the news.

In the past nine days alone 20 COVID-19 patients have died in our hospitals. Niagara has more active cases than Hamilton, Burlington and Oakville combined.

If there is someone up there at Queen’s Park you could wake up to hear our cries for help, we’d appreciate it. Try coming down on them like that 800pound gorilla you talk about every so often. Maybe that will get their attention.

Sam Oosterhoff, we know you’re out there, too, somewhere. Are you listening?

We appreciated your announcement about two weeks ago that, finally, Niagara would get a share of the Pfizer vaccines and start our rollout here like so many other places had already done.

But as Niagara’s only representative in the provincial government, the MPP for Niagara West, we really wish you could explain to us why our 5,500 doses of that other vaccine, made by Moderna, were sent somewhere else.

Yeah, it was earmarked for us but diverted to another region without explanation.

When we tried to ask you how that happened, you answered by praising the government’s rollout of the Pfizer vaccine.

We’d have liked to ask for clarification, but you weren’t doing interviews with Niagara’s daily newspapers, just releasing written statements.

Right now, Niagara could really use a strong voice in government and it’s not clear that we have one. Just a reminder — a local MPP is meant to be Niagara’s voice at Queen’s Park, not the other way around.

The fact is, Niagara is tired of letting the data do the talking.

As Niagara Health president and acting chief executive officer Lynn Guerriero said this week, even back in December an alarm bell should have been ringing at Queen’s Park over what was happening here.

Premier Ford was earmarking shipments of the newly approved Pfizer vaccine for areas of the province in the red zone, but Niagara was officially in orange still.

“We should have been in the red zone at that point,” said Guerriero.

The numbers at the time proved Niagara was clearly heading to a bad place. Even then, local health officials were pleading for the region to be moved to red and onto the vaccine list.

“Shortly after (the vaccine plan was announced) things changed here very, very rapidly and we were in the red zone,” said Guerriero. “But there was no adjustment in the vaccine plan.”

So we waited. And waited. The numbers got worse. Finally, we got some vaccine — then Niagara, like the rest of Canada, learns Pfizer will reduce shipments soon while it expands one of its production facilities.

Despite the COVID-19 data, despite our health officials’ calls for assistance, despite our growing list of coronavirus illnesses and deaths, despite having a far higher seniors population than other regions, our share of the vaccine arrived too late.

And then, to add insult to injury, some of it was redirected elsewhere. It didn’t have to be this way.

The border that ties us to New York state has been closed for months, yet sometimes it feels like Niagara is just as shut off from Toronto.

Premier Ford, are you listening?