BOOSTER BUMBLING

 Guest Post by Ron Penney

ON A WILD GOOSE CHASE - SEARCHING FOR THE ELUSIVE BOOSTER SHOT 

Like those of you who are of a certain age, I was very much looking forward to getting my booster shot, particularly with the advent of the omicron variant, which has proven to be much more contagious, although so far a much more benign variant. 

The evidence is that the two doses does not provide much protection from getting  the variant but does protect against hospitalization and fatal outcomes for those who are fully vaccinated. The booster shot gives much more protection from infection and lessens the severity of symptoms even more. 

The objective has to be to not overwhelm our hospitals, as they also experience the loss of health care workers who have to self isolate because of possible exposure. So far our hospitalizations are very low, but the experience of other jurisdictions demonstrates that this is unlikely to last. 

We know that covid disproportionately effects the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. This province has the largest percentage of both, so wisely the original vaccination effort was prioritized on that basis. 

I thought that effort was very well planned and implemented and was accepted by citizens as a fair process, and one which would reduce hospitalizations and fatal outcomes for those who are most susceptible. 

So when the Premier and Minister of health announced several weeks ago that booster shots for those who were eligible would be available at pharmacies and that the doses would be Moderna, I, along with the tens of thousands eligible set forth to our pharmacies to arrange an appointment. The Premier said just walk into a pharmacy and we would be given our boosters. 

The reality was different. My pharmacy, Lawton’s, told me that they had no vaccine and didn’t expect to be in a position to even schedule appointments until mid January. (I now understand that they expect to start scheduling appointments in early January.) My pharmacist told me that the first they heard of their being enlisted was on the news! It turns out that no one thought to engage the Pharmacy Association before the announcement was made.

Well, I thought, I’ll just ignore what the Premier and Minister of Health told me and I went to the Get the Shot website to get an appointment. I went “booster shopping”, to use the Health Minister’s hectoring phrase. Like most of the rest of you all I saw was “no appointments available.” 

Being relatively savvy on my IPad, I then went to the Shoppers website and, to my surprise, it was a very good one and tells you which of their pharmacies have the vaccine. So I made a call to one of them to make an appointment but was told it was walk-in only. Despite seeing the lineups by my fellow seniors at one of the other Shoppers stores we went to the one in Paradise which I had been speaking to, fully expecting a long lineup. Seeing none, we went inside and were told it was by appointment only, but would we like an appointment on Boxing Day! Of course we would and got our boosters on December 26th, I’m pleased to report. 

While some of my friends and family did manage to snag appointments at the government website or at pharmacies, many haven’t. And I know of some who went as far as Carbonear to get a shot. And we are putting health care workers through the same process. 

Our experience with getting the flue shot was vastly different. There was a generic website which allowed you to book the shot at your nearest pharmacy. It worked well for us. Why Shoppers, as a national chain, doesn’t have a booking site, is odd, but even more odd is  making seniors stand out in the cold for hours in the hope of getting their booster. Why anyone would think that was a good idea is beyond me. 

I also approached my family doctor, who I knew from past experience did flue shots for his patents. The answer was that he had no vaccines. 

In recent days the Chief Medical Officer of Health has implored her colleagues to participate in the vaccination effort. A bit late in the game I would have thought. And I note the Dental Association has offered to help out, as they did previously, with no response. 

One of my in-laws sent me a text a couple of days ago telling me that a mobile vaccination clinic was making seemingly random visits to supermarket parking lots. 

And then, to add insult to injury, I see the Premier administering booster shots at the Confederation Building. The question is how exactly people were chosen to jump the line. Retired public servants were said to be part of the 1000 people vaccinated. I’m one of them, but nobody reached out to me! I  can’t imagine that the seniors who had to lineup in the cold to get their booster shot are happy at this turn of events. It should be seen for what it was - a photo opportunity for the Premier to be seen in doctor mode. 

And now he’s off to Labrador to administer more boosters. May I remind him he’s supposed to be the full-time Premier of the province and shouldn’t be moonlighting. I’m pleased to see that  MHA Leila Evans has made the same point. 

It turns out that contrary to what the Minister of Health and Premier implied at the time about easy access to booster shots at our local pharmacy, they didn’t even have a supply! And then they changed the eligibility criteria from six months to 24 weeks and then reduced it to 22 weeks. How crazy is that? 

What should have happened? 

First of all, we should have used the same priority system that had been established by the first rollout of the first and second dose. This what our sister jurisdiction, Nova Scotia has done. I heard Bob Cadigan on CBC radio making a plaintive request through the airways for a booster shot for his daughter who would have been looked after under the old system. There might be an argument for giving priority to teachers so children could get back to school. A friend of mine has sent me the booking system in Kingston. I went on line and it showed lots of appointments available early in January at multiple places. They know what they are doing and we don’t. 

Secondly, they should have been honest about their initial lack of supply rather the sending us on a largely futile search for an appointment at a pharmacy. 

Thirdly, they should have enlisted family physicians, pharmacists, and dentists at an early stage. 

They knew months ago who and how many and at what time people were eligible for the booster but they did not prepare. 

The fault is not that of the front line workers, who have been working so hard over almost two years. It is a management and ministerial failure. 

The evidence is that after twelve days the booster brings our immunity up and improves outcomes. Given how contagious the variant is, time is of the essence. 

This has been badly mishandled. Whether it will have an impact on our hospital system or individual citizens remains to be seen. If it doesn’t, it will be a result of good luck not good management. 

And why are we hoarding the rapid tests? Almost every other jurisdiction in Canada is making them widely available and properly so. Given the demands on our testing system, which will soon collapse, we need to use every tool at our disposal to slow up the variant. There have been six hour lineups in Happy Valley. The Minister says they have plenty of them. If so, use them there so positive cases can be identified at least. 

A former Newfoundlander, Dr. Lisa Barrett, has led a successful effort in Nova Scotia to administer rapid tests using volunteers, while ours gather dust. Using them in schools might have allowed us to keep schools open rather than a knee jerk reaction to close them, with all that means to our most vulnerable group of students. 

I had attempted to register my complaints with senior officials at the Department of Health but there is only a general email address for that Department, unlike many other Departments where email addresses for their executive are listed. I also managed to find the email address for the Chief Medical Officer of Health and sent it to her. Needless to say there was no response or even an acknowledgment from either. 

I know everyone is busy but I had a series of challenging jobs and no one could ever say they didn’t get a timely response from me. The culture of the public service has certainly changed and not for the best. 

We shouldn’t put up with this but we do. I was shocked when I listened to interviews with those standing in line for their shot at their level of acceptance of this poor treatment. We need to demand good public service, but unless we do, nothing will change. 

However, I was pleased to hear a resident of Nain voicing criticism about the lack of test kits there. The Minister of Health’s response was that he didn’t have a crystal ball. It don’t take a crystal ball to know weeks ago that covid would quickly reach our remote communities. 

When they announced earlier this week that there was a walk in clinic for us over seventies on Monday and they would be giving priority to us I thought they were starting to get themselves organized but no such luck. When I last looked on Wednesday afternoon there were still no appointments available. It’s a totally ad hoc process with no apparent plan. It’s a mess. 

Good luck in finding your booster shot and keeping covid at bay. Our shambolic government hasn’t been much help. Your best bet is to monitor Peter Cowan’s and the VOCM’s  Twitter accounts to see when appointments might be available. A sad commentary on the state of our vaccination effort.