Sudbury health unit transitioning to Phase 2 of vaccination with new tool at its disposal

SUDBURY -- As it prepares for Phase 2 of the vaccine rollout, Sudbury's health unit is one of just two across the province using new internal software to help ensure there is enough staff to meet the demand.

As of Tuesday, about 12 per cent of Sudbury's population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Public Health Sudbury & Districts has been inoculating residents who were eligible as part of Phase 1, which included adults 80 years and older and residents and essential caregivers of long-term care homes amongst others.

"So our goal is to offer the vaccine opportunity to everyone who is eligible in Phase 1 as we start to transition into Phase 2," said Nastassia McNair with Public Health. "There will be a few outstanding individuals. That means anybody who is eligible in Phase 1 can continue to book in the clinics that are happening as we start Phase 2."

After giving out more than 21,000 doses as of Wednesday afternoon, the health unit is ready to move ahead to Phase 2. Key priority groups include:

- Older adults (starting with those 75-79 and decreasing in five-year intervals).

- People with certain health conditions and caregivers (starting with the highest risk).

- Residents, essential caregivers and staff of high-risk congregate living settings.

- Those in hotspot communities (starting with the highest age).

As it switches to Phase 2, the health unit will begin to use the provincial booking system for vaccination appointments. Public Health created its own after the province said its system would be delayed.

"Part of the transition is ensuring that everything can happen smoothly and there's nobody lost in the transition process," said McNair. "So for a little while we will be continuing to use both booking systems; the details on what that's going to look like of course will be communicated. We just want to make sure that everybody has the chance to call in and get their appointment."

In order to ensure there is enough staff to meet the demand, Sudbury is one of only two health units across the province who have partnered with a Canadian start-up company called BookJane. The company offers software it says makes internal scheduling of staff easier than ever.

"The fulfillment rate is 99 per cent, meaning that 99 per cent of those physicians picked up those open shifts in those locations," said Curtis Khan, CEO of BookJane. "We're providing a platform to really help with resources, I would say resources for medical and non-medical healthcare workers."

The company was founded in 2016 and works to help mobilize resources in healthcare. Since its inception, it has developed more than 700 clients, mostly long-term care and retirement homes.

"Based on our relationships with the Ontario Medical Association, they introduced us to a couple public health clinics and that’s the reason we got started helping on the deployment of the vaccination with some of the public health regions," said Khan.

April 1 in Sudbury

Right now, Peel Public Health is the only health unit in the province utilizing the software, with Sudbury set to start using it for vaccination clinics as of April 1. Khan said its goal is to make filling needed positions easier than ever, alleviating the standard practice of phone calls and excel spreadsheets to ensure staffing needs are met.

"We're the first of its kind so we are really mobilizing or call it 'uberizing' the healthcare workforce," Khan said. "So what we do today is fairly unique in the marketplace. We're a disruptor in the industry, so it's fairly new. Some of the companies do some of the things that we do but not a full end-to end-of what we provide … We provide software and we provide resources if facilities need additional resources."

The software will be used by health officials in Sudbury to fill more than a dozen different types of positions, from vaccinators to administration roles.

"So Sudbury is headed in the right direction," said Khan. "We were starting to see a really good uptake now where we've got 14 different types of positions, from nurses to greeters -- the list goes on. We're currently have trained, I would say, 10 clinics in Sudbury and we have movable clinics that's also in training right now."

With pressure on to vaccinate, one northern immunologist is concerned about the rising cases of variants, which studies have shown are not only more transmissible, but in many cases can be more deadly.

"We need to be concerned and we have to keep that in mind when we consider our policies and what worked with the first virus doesn't appear to be quite sufficient to prevent increase in the numbers for these variants," said Dr. Alain Simard of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.

Simard called concerns over the Astrazeneca vaccine, which has been pulled in various countries overseas over concerns of causing blood clots, the result of "bad press."

With vaccine hesitancy a growing concern, Simard said more education is needed, as he believes the vaccine is the only way back to some kind of normalcy.

"The bad news is that with these variants, the percentage that we need to get vaccinated will be a little bit higher than what we originally planned for," Simard said. "We used to think it was 60 to 70 per cent that would be sufficient, now we're talking probably, we're not sure, but probably 70 to 80 per cent."