All Hands on Deck to Increase Vaccination Rates for Third Doses

Message for EDs/Admin Leads, Board Chairs and Lead Clinicians

Dear Members,

Last night, the Primary Care Collaborative members were invited to a meeting with Dr. Kieran Moore, Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Catherine Zahn, Deputy Minister of Health, Ministry of Health representatives and Ontario Health representatives.  Dr. Moore provided an update on Omicron and issued a call to action to primary care to play a significant role in vaccinating people 50+ over the next two weeks.

Omicron update:

• 1536 positive COVID cases were reported on Sunday (the largest ever on a Sunday) and 50% of those cases were Omicron.
• Evidence is now showing that 2 doses of mRNA vaccine does not decrease transmission and there is a need for third shots.
• Omicron cases seem to be doubling every two days and forecasting shows an ongoing uptick in cases.
• 3 doses will hopefully protect people 50+ from serious illness or morbidity.

Response:

• Province’s goal is to vaccinate 3 million people 50+ in the next two weeks.
• This is the priority for the health system over the next 2 weeks.
• The goal is to protect people from serious illness and protect hospital capacity.
• Dr. Moore has met with PHUs and Hospitals and they were asked to step up vaccination efforts, by extending their hours, adding more clinics, work with primary care to increase availability.
• There is an adequate supply of vaccine to reach all 3 million people.

Call to Primary Care:

• Maintain all essential care (especially urgent and emerging issues), but where available redirect routine care over the next two weeks to deploy staff to assist with vaccination efforts.
• There was indication that if you incur extraordinary costs, due to this extraordinary situation, there will be a process to get reimbursed for those costs (more information to come on this).
• If your PHU has does not get in touch with you, please reach out to them to help ensure that all hands are on deck.
• The HHR crisis was identified as an issue, and it was shared that especially in the north and rural areas, medical and nursing students could be engaged to provide vaccines. Ministry is working on a process for their engagement.  

There will be more information coming from the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health, hopefully later today or tomorrow. However, we wanted to share this information with you this morning in case you begin to get contacted by your health system partners or PHU to start planning. Dr. Moore shared last night that this is absolutely the most important thing primary care can do in response to the pandemic.

We will continue to share information with you as we receive it.

 
Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns,

Yours in good health,
The AFHTO Team