Mention was made at Sault Area Hospital’s board of directors meeting, the first of 2021, of how well SAH staff, their partners in the Sault and Algoma health care scene, and the general public have adapted in the fight to contain COVID-19 in the region.
To date, Algoma Public Health has reported 150 cases and two deaths total since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But what directors wanted to know is how soon the Sault and Algoma region can expect a vaccine to combat COVID’s sickening and potentially lethal threat.
“We will probably be seeing a vaccine sooner than later here in our community. In fact, I just heard from Algoma Public Health (APH) they’re hoping in the next week or two to see the vaccine physically here in Sault Ste. Marie, which is wonderful,” said Dr. Lucas Castellani, SAH medical director of infection prevention and control, speaking to the board.
When pressed as to what the Sault can expect over the next three or four months, Wendy Hansson, SAH president and CEO, said despite snags and delays Canada is experiencing with the Pfizer vaccine, “we will be receiving (the) Moderna (vaccine).”
“Algoma Public Health is on point and will be working very, very hard in terms of activating and rolling out the strategy, in identification of the priority populations, the vulnerable in our community, particularly to start with the long term care homes, initially with the residents and then moving on to health care workers and essential caregivers in the homes will be their priority focus (before the rest of the community).”
“It (arrival of the Moderna vaccine) is imminent. Our role is going to be focused on Pfizer (getting that pharmaceutical giant’s vaccine delivered and distributed throughout the Sault and Algoma),” Hansson said.
“We have...become identified as one of the 21 designated hospitals for Pfizer. We have in the last three weeks created a Sault Area Hospital vaccine task team that is working hard daily to begin the preparation, in anticipation, in support of the immunizations once a stable supply chain has been confirmed,” Hansson said.
The arrival of vaccines notwithstanding, COVID-19 remains an unpredictable enemy to fight, Castellani told the board.
“You probably should just put a big question mark on the page,” the doctor said.
“We don't know where we’re going. What I can tell you is we don't know what’s going to happen with these (COVID-19) variants.”
“We see in Barrie right now that there’s a lot of problems with these variants. They've taken over long term care homes and we know they’re probably more infectious and we also know they may be more deadly, which is the scary part, but we don’t know what that means when all is said and done and how that’s going to pan out. And this isn’t just the one variant. There are multiple variants happening.”
At least one COVID-19 variant from the United Kingdom has caused concern for doctors across the world.
“We don’t know how the vaccine’s going to affect all this,” Castellani said.
“We know the vaccine does prevent symptomatic infection. We know the vaccine prevents severe illness. We don’t if it truly prevents disease transmission...we suspect it will reduce transmission, but we don’t know, and we don’t know how this will pan out in terms of vaccine hesitancy, the uptake of vaccine and even availability of vaccine, not just locally, not just nationally but across the world because there are lots of parts of the world that will probably not see the vaccine for a long time.”
“What I do know is that for the next while we’re going to be functioning as though this is our new normal. We will be wearing masks everywhere we go. We may even be wearing medical masks, not just cloth masks, but medical masks everywhere we go. We will probably be physically distancing regularly.”
Meanwhile, for all the havoc COVID has caused, Brandy Sharp Young, SAH communications and media services manager, told SooToday via email “at this time, Sault Area Hospital has no current slowdown related to clinical services (such as cancer treatments, surgeries, diagnostic imaging and other services).”
“All services are operating at 100 per cent capacity. Sault Area Hospital remains committed to the safety of our community, our patients, and our people, by closely monitoring COVID-19 developments within our community and making decisions based on best practices,” Sharp Young stated.
