As officials prepare for the wider distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, the private sector has signalled its desire to help wherever possible, including offering workplaces for inoculation sites.
The focus for the rollout of Phase 2 of the vaccination plan is older adults, those at risk of serious illness and hot-spot areas.
The Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit has designated locations across its catchment area as vaccination sites with plans to include many more community partners to help with the process.
To help in that effort, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has launched its Vaccination Support Portal, through which it hopes local community partners will offer up their spaces and volunteer support.
“Whatever part the private sector can play in making that happen quicker and efficiently is what we’ve come to offer,” said Paul Markle, executive director of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce. “It’s literally offering up our services and they can draw from that what they need.
“The idea behind the Vaccine Support Council is to take… businesses and organizations, like chambers, that lend their expertise in any number of different things. It could be logistics. In a very real way, Chapman's Ice Cream (in Markdale, Ont.) was able to offer up freezers so that they could store vaccines more effectively.”
Local business owners are encouraged to take a look at the site and questionnaire to see if there’s a possible roll for them with the wider rollout.
The Ontario government anticipates two million more COVID-19 vaccine doses will become available to Ontario residents before the end of March. With ongoing and increasing supplies of the various vaccines now approved by Health Canada, the plan in Ontario is to vaccinate up to nine million people between April and July.
The groups targeted for Phase 2 include adults between 60 and 79, those with specific health conditions and some primary caregivers, those who live and work in congregate settings, work in hot spots with high rates of death, hospitalizations and transmission and certain workers who cannot work from home.
An online booking system and provincial customer service desk is scheduled to become available March 15 and will start to help those in Phase 1 still seeking a shot. Most health units are expected to transition from any booking systems they’re now using to the provincial system.
In its effort to help wherever possible, the Barrie Chamber of Commerce is encouraging any local business to hop on the portal to declare any potential for locations or services they may be able to contribute. That information will then be made available to the health unit.
The work streams identified are communications and public awareness related to the vaccines and logistics and executions, including workplace vaccinations.
“This is to help expedite the vaccine rollout — we’re doing collaborations within the private sector” so that a directory of resources, services and capabilities can be developed within the chamber network that can be donated to the public organizations, said Markle. “This is an opportunity for them to pull resources that are local to them.”
