Since the start of the pandemic, if there is one area where the CAQ government boasts of having performed well, it is its vaccination campaign. Either, the rapid establishment of mass vaccination centers with computerized appointments has effectively succeeded in massively and relatively quickly vaccinating a significant portion of the population. But at this stage, we feel that this strategy is running out of steam, that it has reached the limits of its performance and its capabilities.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
As of January 19, 85.6% of the Quebec population had received at least one dose of vaccine, 78.3% two doses and 33.1% three doses. Everywhere, the charts available show a plateau. How then to further extend vaccination coverage?
Because it would be wrong to believe that all people still unvaccinated are so by conviction, by adherence to “antivax” conspiracy theories. In fact, many people do not fit into the vaccine strategy deployed so far, for several reasons. There are many potential barriers to vaccination: language barrier, misinformation or lack of information, reduced mobility, social deprivation, isolation, homelessness, lack of internet access to make appointments, lack of resources to make steps leading to obtaining an appointment, lack of transportation, etc.
Once again, the government relied on hypercentralised, formatted logistics, top down, for the vaccination campaign.
The entire population, all regions, all communities must fit into the same mold of the one and only proposed model of vaccination. This is once again forgetting the particularities of the clienteles specific to each region, each neighborhood, each community.
Yes, for all and the vast majority of the population, the current vaccination program based on making appointments mainly via the internet and a few targeted walk-in vaccination centers will have reached the target. But we must now ask ourselves how to reach unvaccinated individuals, those who do not “fit the mold”. It is here that the system must be flexible, agile, rooted in the reality of the field and that it finds solutions outside the box, outside the imposed mould, close to the field. We must let the field find initiatives, solutions adapted to its realities.
living with the virus
The government is increasingly adopting the narrative that we must now learn to live with the virus. The vaccine must therefore be able to go easily and simply in the field, just like the other vaccines easily available in the office, in the family medicine group (GMF), in the pharmacy, in the hospital.
Have you injured yourself and are going to the emergency room for stitches? Neither one nor two, we immediately vaccinate you for tetanus. Without ceremony, without endless procrastination and without administrative mountain. Do you see your doctor for your annual appointment? He offers to vaccinate you here, immediately, for the flu.
The vaccine for COVID-19 should now be easily offered and accessible to doctors and nurses who are already deployed in the field and who have all the capacities and all the technical platforms necessary to vaccinate the patients they see in their daily practice. .
Physicians and nurses visiting their home care clients. Family physicians and specialists who practice in offices, often near pharmacies that can store vaccines easily. In the emergency room, in the hospital on the care units. You are in the presence of a health professional for a health problem or a follow-up not related to COVID-19, you are asked about your vaccination status, you are offered the possibility of getting vaccinated. As simple as that.
If a segment of the population that has not yet been vaccinated, which nevertheless consents to be vaccinated, is unable to get to the vaccine, the vaccine must be able to get to them. Enable nurses and doctors to vaccinate their patients as soon as possible, while simplifying administrative processes. Vaccination must be decentralized. This is the key to optimally increasing vaccination coverage in Quebec.