A glimpse of hope was felt in London and Middlesex County as the coronavirus vaccination programs went underway in the region Wednesday morning.
Karen Dann, a registered nurse and administrator with Country Terrace nursing home, was the region’s first recipient of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine after receiving a shot at the Western Fair Agriplex.
The first of two doses was administered by Tracy Benedict, a public health nurse with the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU). Dann will receive her second dose in 21 days from Wednesday.
“I’m very excited… I don’t even have the words,” Dann said.
“It’s just a momentous occasion to know we’re now going to move ahead into a better time and we’re not going to be under the pressure we’ve been under in these nursing homes.”
Dann referred to the pandemic as a “battle we’re not winning.”
“We’ve got our armour but we never had a weapon. Today, we have a weapon: the COVID-19 vaccine is the weapon we needed.”
London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) chief operating officer Neil Johnson said the arrival of the vaccine is a “game-changer for our community.”
“This is one of the most exciting days for people who work in health care… everyone is pumped.”
The first shipment of the region’s COVID-19 vaccines arrived on Monday.
Dr. Alex Summers, the MLHU’s associate medical officer of health, said earlier this week that the vaccine will be distributed throughout the region, “including our more rural parts of Middlesex and London… as well as the counties to our north and to our south.”
However, Summers stressed that vaccines “will be a scarce resource for us here locally for the first little while.”
As announced last week, the first shipment of vaccines will go to health-care workers in local long-term care and retirement homes, as well as some hospital staff.
Dr. Chris Mackie, the medical officer of health for the MLHU, told a media briefing on Wednesday that each home is allowed to have 15 per cent of workers to be vaccinated via the first batch of vaccines.
“So we have asked the homes to identify which 15 per cent of people will be the first recipients and then we’ve asked them for another 15 per cent (for) the second recipients,” Mackie said.
Johnson adds that from there, the LHSC will provide selected recipients with a phone number they can call in order to register for a vaccination. The hospital network’s chief operating officer says they’ve already received plenty of calls.
“We are taking a look at other different options, we want to make the experience as easy as possible for people… there are some technicalities of obtaining consent and other things that we have to work through,” Johnson said.
When asked about a potential reluctance from the public to receive the vaccine, Mackie said that while the MLHU has concerns, their main focus is the current vaccine rollout.
“The reality right now is we have a vaccine which probably in the range of 75 per cent of people are going to be willing to take, when right now we have enough for less than one per cent of people,” Mackie said.
“I am not at all worried right now about that 25 (per cent) or less who are going to be hesitant around this vaccine, I’m worried about how do we get the precious few doses that we have into people’s arms.”
In the meantime, Health Canada approved U.S. biotech firm Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday morning.
It anticipates shipments to Canada will begin within the next 48 hours.
Up to 168,000 doses are set to arrive by the end of December, and two million by the end of March.
—With files from 980 CFPL’s Andrew Graham and Jacquelyn LeBel