Long-term-care rates no longer public

Public health says province has ended its access to the vaccination numbers

WATERLOO REGION — Vaccination rates for nursing and retirement homes are no longer being made public.

Waterloo Region’s public health unit has stopped publishing how many workers and residents are vaccinated, saying the province has ended its access to the numbers. The province says it doesn’t have the numbers but the public health unit may have them.

This has left the public in the dark about a provincial pledge to boost immunization among workers and vulnerable residents.

“From a public transparency and accountability perspective, it is essential that vaccination rates in long-term care be publicly reported,” said John Hirdes, a public health professor at the University of Waterloo, who studies care for the elderly.

“We failed to act quickly enough to protect long-term-care residents in the first wave. We had high numbers of deaths in subsequent waves. Given that vaccination is our best weapon in the fight now, we need to know how well long-term care is covered.”

Hirdes worries about workers rejecting vaccination. Seven unvaccinated employees were among 41 staff and residents sickened in recent outbreaks that left five elderly residents dead in local nursing and retirement homes.

Hirdes says vaccination should be made mandatory for residents, staff, volunteers and visitors. He wants immunization data made public for each individual home. That’s because high vaccination rates across all homes can mask lower rates in some homes.

“Variation matters,” he said. “We

humbled and thrilled to have his design chosen. He has designed nine other coins for the Royal Canadian Mint, which contacted him shortly after he graduated a decade ago from Sheridan College’s design program after seeing his designs online.

All of those earlier coins were commemorative or collector’s items. This is the first time his work is on a coin with broad circulation.

It can be tough to illustrate something as esoteric as a scientific discovery, in a way that’s understandable, on something as small as a coin, he said.

“There’s a lot of challenges with designing on such a small canvas,” Koreck said. “How do we celebrate those four scientists, as well as show symbolic imagery that will resonate with Canadians?”

People associate insulin with the daily injections diabetics take, but the image of a syringe could have been off-putting to people who aren’t keen on needles. He toyed with the idea of a key, since insulin acts as a key that unlocks a cell to release glucose.

He even looked up the molecular structure of insulin, which is produced in the body as a hexamer, a cluster of six molecules. The blossom-like structure of the hexamer “is quite strikingly beautiful,” he said, but ultimately proved too complicated for a coin.

Working on a design celebrating scientific contributions during the pandemic, when scientific research into the virus and vaccines has proven so important, felt particularly relevant, Koreck said.

“I would say my design is just a thank you, to all the scientists, researchers, lab technicians, who worked on this discovery, as well as do all the ongoing research today.” Catherine Thompson is a Waterloo Region-based reporter focusing on urban affairs for The Record. Reach her via email: cthompson@therecord.com