Over 3,000 doses of the COVID vaccine have been administered in Ontario, just as patients in the ICU with the disease reach an all-time high

Thestar.com
Dec. 23, 2020
May Warren

Nine months and 17 days after the first COVID patient arrived at Trillium Health Partners, long-term-care home Registered Nurse Bella Rego became the first person in Peel Region to get the vaccine.

“I am honoured and humbled,” she wrote in a note of thanks captured by Star photographer Steve Russell’s lens, at the Mississauga Hospital on Monday. “Not only for my personal health but for all our residents, and all our families and all our friends. Be safe.”

Shots were administered to staff at long-term-care homes and other front-line health-care workers across the GTA and Ontario, early this week, from Thunder Bay to London. There have been over 3,000 doses given out so far in the province and 20,000 across the country, according to tracking by an independent open data working group.

Images of nurses, doctors and personal support workers rolling up their sleeves and flashing huge grins flooded social media, allowing their weary colleagues, and a COVID-fatigued public, to look toward brighter days ahead.

But the hopeful note was met with a grim one, with 273 COVID patients in ICUs across Ontario and 172 on ventilators, according to the province’s daily numbers, higher than at any time in the pandemic, as cases continue to rise, straining an already overstretched health-care system. Members of the Ontario Hospital Association posted different figures on Twitter, Tuesday, showing 285 COVID patients in the ICU, according to Critical Care Services Ontario. Either way the numbers are at an all-time high.

At a new COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the not yet opened Mackenzie Health’s Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital, the first shots were given to long-term-care workers the same day.

Mackenzie Health president and CEO Altaf Stationwala said he estimated between 100 and 150 long-term-care workers would be vaccinated Tuesday, and about 350 to 400 on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital exceeded its staffed 38-bed ICU capacity last week for the first time since the start of the pandemic, and had to move five ICU patients to other hospitals over the weekend because they didn’t have room for them, according to Stationwala. They now have about 42 COVID patients, with about 15 in the ICU.

“The surge just started to hit,” said Stationwala. “The numbers are pretty high, we’re higher than we were in the first wave.”

Staff are battling “exhaustion,” he said, although the vaccine is the “ray of light that’s coming through those cloudy skies right now.” Mackenzie Health has already cut back on elective surgeries, functioning at around 60 per cent of what they’d usually do, and he pleads with the public to stay home over the holidays.

“I think that’s what our staff needs more than anything else, they need to know that the public is taking it seriously because they’re on the front lines battling every single day,” Stationwala said.

Five long-term-care health-care workers from Camilla Care Community were vaccinated Monday afternoon, at Trillium Health Partners, said spokesperson Keeley Rogers in an email. ICU capacity is at 85 per cent between acute care facilities (Credit Valley Hospital and Mississauga Hospital).

“We are required by the province to maintain ICU capacity to ensure we can surge and meet the needs of our patients. As part of our plan to increase capacity, we have recently opened 12 additional critical care beds, bringing our total to 112, with plans to open more,” she added.

This week marks the start of “Phase 1 B” of the province’s vaccine distribution plan, which will continue to early January, according to the Ontario government’s website. It will involve about 90,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine delivered to up to 17 hospital sites in the hardest hit areas, for staff in long-term-care and retirement homes, hospitals, and other congregate settings caring for seniors.

At University Health Network, the site of Ontario’s first COVID vaccines last week, over 1,500 people have been vaccinated, around 300 to 400 per day, said spokesperson Shaun Dias in an email.

Long-term-care workers and front-line staff in acute care are prioritized. There’s a list of about 600 people within walking distance (Mount Sinai, Women’s College, and Sick Kids), working on COVID units, ICUs, and the emergency departments, who are on “standby,” added spokesperson Gillian Howard.

“If there is a dose available, there is a ‘draw’ from amongst the names on that list and the drawn people are called and asked to come to the vaccination centre,” Howard said in an email.

“The vaccine is a precious resource and we do not want even one dose to be wasted so in the first week we had to be prepared for ‘no shows’ from the registered health-care workers from long-term care (LTC). It is also the case that there are some vials with six doses instead of five, so the booked number of LTC workers was less than the doses available.”
Howard said this time of year is generally slower as people don’t want to schedule procedures over the holidays, but the increase in patients with the virus is “concerning.”

“It is too early to say whether we can manage through this surge without having to bring staff back from their vacations,” she said, adding all UHN ICU beds are currently full.

Ontario doesn’t currently release numbers on how many doses of vaccine have been administered, said Jean-Paul Soucy, a PhD student in epidemiology at Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He and a group of volunteers, mostly from the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph that have been following COVID data since the start of the pandemic, are tracking doses across the country.

The team listens to press conferences, and collects the data by combing websites where it’s posted, such as the Ontario Hospital Association, which receives situation reports from the Ministry of Health.

So far, more than 20,000 doses have been administered in Canada, according to their count, and at least 3,409 in Ontario (that doesn’t include shots done on Tuesday as they usually update late in the evening), Soucy said.

“This week is when there’s going to be expanded distribution to a lot of places so I think now is where we really see if those logistics are ready to get the doses out,” he said.

While the 20,000 figure is “good news” he’s careful not to give the impression that COVID is under control.

“We’ve still got to get through this winter, that will be tough,” he said.

“Especially in Ontario.”