City director of emergency management Merrick Brown addresses city council on Monday night to discuss a new partnership with Alberta Health Services to provide mobile vaccine clinics in the city over the next three weekends.--News Photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
The city will co-host mobile, walk-up vaccination clinics over the next three weekends, officials confirmed at Monday night’s council meeting.
Director of emergency management Merrick Brown told the News last week his office was in talks with Alberta Health Services to bring “pop-up” clinics to the Hat in an effort to increase vaccine uptake.
That’s in response to extremely high cases, a high case load, hospitalizations and deaths in the city due to COVID-19 since August.
“The benefit is that you can walk right up, no appointment needed, and get vaccinated,” Brown told council in an situation update added to council’s agenda.
“We want to do everything we can to help our residents get vaccinated, because this is the option and this is the way out.”
Brown says the increase in local vaccination rate is now outpacing the rest of the province, but overall is still behind the provincial average. Medical officials have stressed that vaccination makes it less likely a person will catch or spread the disease, and much less likely they will suffer severe symptoms, be hospitalized, or die.
According to figures provided by Alberta Health, nearly 81% of Medicine Hatters over the age of 12 have received one dose of vaccine, and 71% are considered fully vaccinated with two. The share of vaccinated teens drops to 58% however, and only 57% of those aged 20 to 39 are fully immunized.
The coming clinics will consist of medically equipped buses set up in yet-to-be determined locations in the city, likely in parks, as a way to draw in anyone who has not otherwise booked their shots. Vaccinations are still available through local pharmacies and AHS.
Local active cases fell notably for the first time in about two months.
From 660 active cases before the weekend, the figure was 574 on Monday, when Brown addressed council. The active figure was down again to 544 on Tuesday, but with three deaths recorded over the four days, the city has now lost 61 residents since the pandemic began, nearly two thirds of which have come in the summer’s fourth wave.
A total of 113 new cases were positively diagnosed over the past four days.
“We still have work to do,” said Brown on Monday. “If we continue with this rate, it’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse.”
“Alberta is by far the worst, or double that the rest of Canada … It is time definitely to take action.”
Council members asked Brown if there was the potential for the city to take further action to either promote vaccinations or aid AHS in the current capacity crisis.
He says the city has limited ability to provide health-care services, but is actively promoting vaccinations as part of the AHS plan and is ready to assist in other unspecified ways if requested.
