Hastings Prince Edward Public Health is planning ahead as the fight against COVID-19 continues.
Some plans were outlined following the Board of Health virtual meeting on Wednesday.
That planning includes the possibility of a larger vaccine rollout and keeping ahead of case management.
It will be summer or later before the general public gets the COVID vaccine.
Eric Serwotka added “We are looking at at least eight or a dozen mass immunization sites that will be available to the general public. We still have to work with those priority populations, those adults that are over a certain age, essential workers. Once those groups have been done and those will be done in a mass immunization phase as well, then we’ll move on to the general public, adults that are between the ages of 16 and 60. So that will come into play and there’ll be more options … we are exploring with some of our partners. We have still to confirm some of these but we’re looking at Rink A at the Wellness Centre and Loyalist College.”
“The plan”is to have access in every part of our community so the people can have easy access to the vaccine and that it’s a seamless process.”
Dr Ethan Toumishey explained the case management process.
“We’re really looking into case management process in clusters. Where we see groups of community not able to isolate it generates a lot of subsequent cases.”
“For the Hastings area there have been numerous times where we’re predominately picking up cases where people have, say, travelled to higher endemic areas so that percentage will go down. When we look at the social factors at play it can really accelerate the number of cases in the local area. We see groups in the community when they are not able to isolate.
