A resolution that would see the City of North Bay request the vaccine allocation be prioritized to public health unit regions that are still in phase 1 will be on the agenda at Tuesday's regular meeting of North Bay City Council.
Deputy Mayor Tanya Vrebosch, as the mover, and Coun. Bill Vrebosch, as the seconder, will seek support for the motion designed to catch up to regions in Southern Ontario and Ottawa when it comes to the vaccine roll-out.
The motion notes "the delay in the Health Unit vaccine allocations is causing increasing inequities in the booking of COVID-19 vaccination clinics."
The North Bay Parry Sound Health Unit reports, as of Wednesday,16,682 vaccination doses have been administered at clinics within the Health Unit region, up 501 since Tuesday. The percentage of adults in the district aged 18 years or older with at least one dose was at 14.8 per cent.
"The biggest thing is Northern Ontario is behind the rest of the province," Deputy Mayor Vrebosch says. "A lot of our front-line health care workers have not been vaccinated. Those with chronic health issues are still not vaccinated yet."
The motion states the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit received its first allocation of vaccine more than a month and a half later than Southern Ontario and Ottawa health regions yet vaccine allocation for the local Health Unit has not increased over time to compensate for the delay in the provision of the first vaccine allocation. This district remains in phase 1 while many other regions have moved to phase 2.
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Andrea McLellan, Director COVID-19 Immunization Strategy for the Health Unit said during Friday's media availability a shipment of nearly 5,000 Pfizer doses would be used up by the end of the week and a shipment of 3,500 doses is expected next week.
"We continue to advocate and we have received municipal support to assist us in advocating for more vaccine but at this point in time, we have not received additional supply above what we were originally allocated," said McLellan.
"It took one outbreak in our community to put us on the same footing as Peel and Toronto," says Tanya Vrebosch, who also sits on the Health Unit's Board of Health. "We were very diligent in getting ourselves back on track but all it takes is one person to spread the variant."
The district's demographics also play a role in bringing the motion forward, say the Vrebosches, as 26.5 per cent of the population in the Parry Sound District and 22.4 per cent of the population in the Nipissing District are aged 65 years or older, compared to 16.7 per cent for all of Ontario, according to 2016 Census data. Additionally, Indigenous populations have not received their required allocation.
And: Outbreak declared in Duchesnay, Nipissing First Nation with five COVID cases confirmed so far
"It's a call to action," says Tanya Vrebosch. "What is the province's plan to help get us on track? We should not be in phase 1 when everyone else is so far ahead. It's causing people to want to go to other districts to get the vaccination instead of staying home. It's going against everything we've been trying to do."
If passed, the motion is to be forwarded to Premier Doug Ford; Christine Elliot, Minister of Health; Vic Fedeli, MPP for Nipissing; Norm Miller, MPP for Parry Sound-Muskoka; John Vanthof, MPP for Timiskaming-Cochrane; Mayors/Reeves within the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit District; Ontario Boards of Health; and, the Association of Local Public Health Agencies (alPHa).
