Hamilton to get Moderna vaccine early next week
News comes as there were 200 new COVID cases reported here on Friday
Hamilton will receive a long-awaited “small” batch of Moderna vaccine doses early next week, confirms Conservative MPP Donna Skelly.
At least one care home in outbreak has been told it will be able to inoculate all residents in the next week to 10 days.
The arrival of the Moderna vaccine has been much-anticipated in Hamilton as it is the more portable of the two vaccines available in Canada — the other being Pfizer, which requires deep-cold storage.
Its arrival hopefully means long-term-care home residents will soon be vaccinated.
“As for who will be receiving the vaccine, that will be determined by the local health team which is guided by provincial prioritization policies,” said Skelly in an email to The Spectator on Friday afternoon.
Shalom Village, which is in the midst of a large outbreak that has infected more than 100 residents and resulted in at least 17 deaths, confirmed Friday they will begin vaccinations of residents soon.
“We are going to be vaccinating all our
Shalom residents in the next week to 10 days due to the early shipment of Moderna vaccine to Hamilton,” read an update from CEO Ken Callaghan.
The news comes three days after the province announced Hamilton was not a “priority” hot zone selected for an accelerated vaccination program promising to vaccinate all longterm-care residents in Toronto, Peel, York and Windsor-Essex by Jan. 21.
Hamiltoni a ns, i nc l udi ng Mark Robertson, whose father is “in the crosshairs” at Shalom Village, a long-term-care home with a large COVID-19 outbreak, decried the province’s decision to leave Hamilton out. Hamilton’s four NDP MPPs called on the province to include Hamilton in the accelerated plan in an open letter issued Friday.
Meanwhile, public health is reporting 200 new COVID cases Friday, three new deaths and six new outbreaks.
There is little The Spec can tell you about the new deaths. It appears one is from the Meadows long-term-care home, according to public health’s outbreak chart, but information on the chart is often reclassified. On Friday, public health removed four deaths from the chart — two from Shalom Village, one from St. Elizabeth’s Retirement Residence and one from Hamilton General Hospital’s 7 West neurosurgery unit.
It remains unclear why. Asked why the deaths were removed, public health said data is subject to change.
“Some reasons for fluctuation include ongoing investigation and data collection, transfers between health units, error detection and linking/unlinking cases to out breaks ,” said spokesperson Jacqueline Durlov in response to a similar query this week. “Public health services continues to encourage the public and members of the media to focus on the trends we are seeing in the community rather than single-day data fluctuations.”
The three new deaths include one person in their 70s and two older than 80. Hamilton has recorded a total of 196 COVID deaths since the pandemic began. A COVID death means the person died with COVID, not necessarily because of it.
Meanwhile, the city’s per cent positivity rate jumped to six per cent Friday from less than five the day before. This means six per cent of recent COVID tests were positive.
And as Ontario reported more than 4,200 COVID cases Friday, Premier Doug Ford struck a sombre tone at his media briefing.
“This is so, so serious, matter of fact, this is the most serious situation we’ve ever been in ever, ever — since the beginning of this pandemic,” Ford said, pleading with the federal government to send more vaccines to Ontario, warning the province is “quickly running out.”
In Hamilton, six new outbreaks were reported Friday. They include: Janco Steel Ltd., which has 20 cases in staff; Cardinal Retirement Residence, which has two cases in residents; Idlewyld Manor, which has one case in a staff member; Arbour Creek Long-Term Care Centre, which has one case in a staff member; Baycoat, a steel company, which has five staff cases; and Ridgeview LongTerm Care Home, which has one case in a staff member.
Cardinal had an outbreak in the first wave that resulted in nine deaths. Idlewyld had an outbreak in November that resulted in 25 cases and one death before it was declared over on Dec. 27.
Rick Nordeman, human resources and safety manager with Janco Steel, said the company reported the cases to public health on Monday. All 20 staff affected are all doing well and, thankfully, he said, none have severe symptoms.
The outbreak affects two of the four steel plants in Hamilton, he said. The company has not had to halt operations.
There are at least 32 active outbreaks in Hamilton.
Separate from public health’s reporting, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton reported an outbreak at the COVID unit of its Charlton Avenue hospital. Two health-care workers have tested positive.
Two outbreaks in Hamilton are now over: one was at Dundurn Place Care Centre, which had two staff cases, and the other was at Extendicare Hamilton, which had one staff case.
As of Friday, Hamilton has 7,198 total cases, of which nearly one quarter — 1,675 cases — are active and 5,243 are resolved. A total of 473 cases have been hospitalized.
There are 30 COVID patients at St. Joseph’s Healthcare and 63 at Hamilton Health Sciences, for a total of 93.