COVID vaccinations underway at area's long-term care homes
The Windsor- Essex County Health Unit began inoculating long-term care home residents ahead of schedule over the weekend, with immunization underway at a fifth facility on Monday.
Last Wednesday, the health unit received enough doses of the Moderna vaccine to immunize residents at roughly half of the 44 long-term care and retirement homes in the region.
Although the health unit publicly stated the first doses of Moderna would reach the arms of local long-term care home residents on Monday — six days after it received a shipment of the vaccines — it actually started immunizing residents on Friday.
“The moment we had the vaccine in our building, we did everything to get the vaccine out the door,” said Dr. Wajid Ahmed, medical officer of health for Windsor-essex. “That continues to be the case.”
This round of vaccinations is scheduled to be complete in the next seven to 10 days, Ahmed said. Conversations about getting the jab to retirement homes, as well as the essential caregivers for residents there and in long-term care, are ongoing.
“The real struggle will be the long-term care homes that are currently in major outbreaks and how we can move forward with vaccinating them,” Ahmed said.
Twenty long-term care and retirement homes have active outbreaks of COVID-19, with five new outbreaks since Dec. 31. The health unit had said it would begin inoculating residents at facilities without outbreaks first before moving on to those at facilities with small, contained outbreaks.
Although some facilities have staff capable of administering the Moderna vaccine, the health unit is providing them with assistance in using the province's reporting database. At other homes, public health nurses are administering the vaccines as well as providing IT support.
“We are working with individual homes to provide whatever they need,” said health unit CEO Theresa Marentette.
“The background work for the long-term care homes is very important and we need their support ... Every home is a little bit different.”
The health unit has booked homes for immunization in the coming days.
“We are working as quickly as
we can,” Marentette said. “I don't think there's a delay. There are many pieces to this, and people don't understand that. We are doing the best we can and are doing a good job supporting the homes.”
To determine which homes receive the first round of vaccines, the health unit is assessing whether or not a facility has multiple residents sharing rooms, how large a facility is, and if a memory care unit is present. The health unit also takes into consideration whether a facility previously had a COVID-19 outbreak and how challenging it was to contain it.
While the Moderna vaccine must be stored long-term at -20C, it can
be kept at refrigerator temperatures in the short term, unlike the Pfizer vaccine that requires -70C storage. Also unlike the Pfizer vaccine, Moderna shots can be transported multiple times without compromising the integrity of the doses. For those reasons, the Moderna vaccine can be safely taken to long-term care and retirement homes and administered in-house.
Windsor Regional Hospital continues to immunize long-term care and retirement home staff, as well as other health-care professionals, with the Pfizer vaccine at the St. Clair College Sportsplex.