Vaccinations among care home staff soar

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/06/2021 (1733 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The COVID-19 vaccination rate among Manitoba’s estimated 10,000 personal care home workers has jumped to as high as 80 per cent, following a campaign to improve immunizations among staff, including offering shots at work.

Manitoba care home workers became eligible for vaccination in mid-March, but uptake among staff was low — hovering around 30 per cent — until a targeted campaign was launched earlier this spring. It was co-ordinated by the province’s vaccine task force, the Long Term and Continuing Care Association of Manitoba, and the Manitoba Association of Residential & Community Care Homes.

During a media briefing last week, a provincial official said the vaccination rate for long-term care staff is now estimated to be between 70 and 80 per cent, although the province was unable to provide more concrete data.

“I think it was just a matter of the vaccine task force not understanding the challenges that the staff were facing,” said Jan Legeros, executive director of the Long Term and Continuing Care Association. “Once we helped them understand that, they implemented (improvements) right away.”

Legeros said her association, along with the Manitoba Association of Residential & Community Care Homes, addressed immunizations concerns through presentations by health officials to personal care home staff.

Language was also a barrier to immunization for many employees, as English is not their first language, Legeros said.

“Because of the language barrier, many of the staff can’t fill out the consent form without assistance, and so they were fearful of going down to a supersite and being confronted with English only and having to muddle through all of that. It was very intimidating for them, I think,” she said.

While the province began offering interpretation services for vaccine bookings by end of April, the turning point for improving immunizations among nursing home staff came in mid-May, when the province agreed to vaccinate employees in their workplaces, Legeros said, adding staff often found it difficult to find time to go to a vaccine site.

Legeros said the association had been lobbying for in-house immunizations for COVID-19, similar to the program offered for the flu shot.

“When we had a flu season, and that was the only thing we had to worry about, we always had in-house vaccinations and we always had a very high uptake amongst the staff and residents,” Legeros said. “But with COVID we didn’t have that opportunity. So we let the vaccine task force know that this would mean a huge uptake if we could have staff vaccinations in-house.”

She said an estimated 10,000 people work in the long-term care sector in Manitoba, including about 5,700 in Winnipeg.

During the week of May 17, operators asked staff in care homes to sign up to be vaccinated at work. Legeros said 300 staff in Winnipeg signed up on the first day. By the end of the week, that number had climbed to 600 within the city.

“You can see right away that we jumped 10 per cent of the staff in Winnipeg who are now vaccinated because we were able to offer it in-house,” Legeros said. “That was a huge success and that will carry on, and will be continuing with the second dose that way as well.”

Care home residents were among the first people in Manitoba to be vaccinated, with the campaign to immunize residents completed at the end of February. However, vaccinations were not offered to staff at the same time.

Since May, staff immunization clinics have been offered in about 35 homes across the province.

“There’s been so many concerns about supply; I’m sure that was the big question in the vaccine task forces’ mind,” Legeros said. “Anyway, we have it now and it has been a huge success and we hope that this is just going to mean the numbers that we really want to see, which would be 80 to 85 per cent.”

The Free Press on Friday requested updated data on vaccine rates among personal care home staff in Manitoba, but a government spokesperson said it did not have a reliable estimate. No other explanation was given.

But data provided by the province on May 3 showed approximately 8,830 personal care home residents have been fully vaccinated and another 575 are partially immunized.

As of May 3, the province said out of all health-care workers in Manitoba, 42,204 had received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 8,867 workers had received one dose. The province estimates there are approximately 60,000 health-care workers in Manitoba, including over 48,000 unionized workers.

A Manitoba government official said recent changes to rules that allow vaccinated care home staff to work at more than one location have also driven demand for vaccination.

Legeros said some personal care home operators estimate that 70 to 75 per cent of their staff have been immunized, while others have coverage rates closer to 60 per cent.

Last week, the province’s COVID-19 vaccine task force said personal care home operators can request doses from the government to administer directly to their residents and staff.

The long term care association has had conversations with the task force about making vaccination a condition of employment for care home staff, Legeros said, but no such policies have been announced by the Manitoba government.

As of Sunday, COVID-19 outbreaks were declared at six personal care homes in Manitoba, with 19 cases among staff and 17 cases among residents, leading to six deaths.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca