At least 10 people who were not care-home residents or front-line staff were required to be inoculated by Union claims nurses. The Union further claims that one of the medical staff of the home left the premises with about five doses of the Moderna vaccine. The home with 168 beds is in its fourth outbreak. Since the pandemic began, it has lost 25 residents to COVID-19. To avoid wasting open vials of vaccine, the care home said the doses were administered. Dr. Samir Sinha, the director of geriatrics at Sinai Health, in Toronto says: “This is simply totally unacceptable.”
The Union now looks into the public health issue, Public Health Ontario and the York Region Public Health. “We have so many people who are vulnerable to dying from COVID.… This actually means we’re wasting doses and we’re actually costing lives,” says a Geriatrician. He says, Dr. Sinha. The home confirmed that the vaccine “offered to non-front-line staff who work or volunteer for the residence … including me,” but only after the receipt of the vaccine by “all of the available staff and residents”
Iacobelli confirms that he received the Moderna Vaccine. “We further extended the remaining unused vaccines to family members of staff and volunteer board members,” Nurse says she was told to give at least one board member of COVID-19 vaccines, and several executives’ family members and friends. Board members and their families would not normally be exempt from the pandemic lockdown in the province. The Union also states that the Union is concerned about individuals entering the care home, which it describes as a serious violation of infection control measures.
“There’s supposed to be an absolute lockdown in terms of people visiting. If you have an ill family member who is a resident at Villa Gambin, you can only have one designated essential caregiver who can go in,” she says. It also does not clarify how these people learned of the opportunity or happened to be in the home locked down to anyone other than front-line employees and essential visitors.
Source CBC
