Canada’s pharmacists say they can vaccinate up to three million people a week against COVID-19, but governments across the country have largely kept these health care providers in the dark about what role they might play once more shots are delivered.
With vaccination of the general population set to begin in just two months’ time, pharmacists and the country’s largest chain, Shoppers Drug Mart, have so far had only preliminary discussions with some provincial leaders about how the nation’s largest immunization campaign will unfold.
“We’re anticipating pharmacists will play a role somewhere down the line. I guess what we’re not clear on yet is exactly when,” Joelle Walker, the vice-president of public affairs at the Canadian Pharmacists Association, told CBC News.
The country’s 11,000-plus pharmacies should be equipped to administer the vaccine, given their years of experience with the flu shot campaign, but facts about their possible role in the COVID-19 vaccination program have been scant.
Walker said the annual flu shot campaign, while large, is a much smaller endeavour than the COVID-19 vaccination campaign — and it still takes months to plan.
“It’s definitely concerning because there is a lot of work to be put into these things. Pharmacists need to know roughly when they might expect the vaccines, the kind of quantities and who they’ll be targeting,” she said. “Bringing pharmacists in at the front end of planning would be helpful.
“The message to the government really is, ‘If you don’t have those conversations early on, it does open up the possibility that things aren’t going to go as smoothly as Canadians expect.’ Now is the time to have those more concrete conversations.”
Walker said getting vaccinated at a pharmacy is convenient — 90 per cent of Ontario residents, for example, live within a five-kilometre drive of one. And pharmacies are often the only health care options in rural and remote communities where access to primary care is limited, she added.
Pharmacies are also accustomed to managing patient notifications and refills, which makes them well-equipped to track the two-dose regime for the Pfizer and Moderna products, she said.
“Because the health systems are so tapped out with nurses and physicians on the front line in acute care — we don’t have an infinite bandwidth of providers — pharmacies are absolutely the natural place to do this,” Walker said.
Immunization campaign off to a slow start
The Canadian immunization campaign has gotten off to a slow start. A month into the inoculation efforts, barely one per cent of the population has received at least one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna products.
Tens of thousands of the estimated 605,000 doses that the federal government has so far shipped to the provinces and territories are sitting in freezers. Manitoba and Nova Scotia have been particularly slow out of the gate, using less than half of the shots they have received.
The United Kingdom and the U.S. have vaccinated more people per capita than Canada. They’ve also released detailed plans explaining how pharmacies will fit into the vaccination effort.
The U.K., for example, started identifying pharmacies in November as suitable vaccination centres.
A customer wearing a mask walks out of a Walgreen’s pharmacy store and past a sign advising that COVID-19 vaccines are not yet available on Dec. 2, 2020, in Seattle, Washington. (Elaine Thompson/AP Photo)
More than 11,500 such sites in the U.K. have been chosen so far to help administer shots over the course of 2021. They’re high-volume community druggists that have the capacity to administer 1,000 vaccines each week while maintaining stringent cold storage requirements. The National Health Service has said more pharmacies could be added to the list.
This week, 200 pharmacies started administering the shot to U.K. residents and eligible patients are able to book their vaccination appointments online.
Some U.K. pharmacists could also be put to work in community spaces, such as schools and churches, that have been converted into makeshift clinics.
Last fall, the U.S. federal government tapped Walgreen’s — one of the country’s largest drug store chains, with more than 9,000 stores nationwide — to inoculate long-term care residents in 35,000 different homes. Its primary competitor, CVS, was also recruited to lead vaccination efforts in retirement residences.
The American inoculation campaign began in earnest last week at community pharmacies and at the in-store pharmacies of some grocery chains. With advance notice, the chains were able to recruit thousands more pharmacists and technicians to help. Walgreen’s alone has 45,000 people now qualified to administer shots.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference at a Publix Super Market in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla, Wednesday, January 13, 2021. DeSantis announced the expansion of the use of Publix pharmacies as COVID-19 vaccination sites. (Bob Self/The Florida Times-Union via AP Photo)
Tens of thousands of U.S. drug store locations, and big box stores like Costco and Walmart, will soon be vaccinating health care and front line workers and — after a change in federal policy on Monday — Americans over the age of 65.
All told, 60 per cent of all pharmacies in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have signed a deal with the U.S. government to receive doses.
Canada’s pharmacies could do 3 million shots a week
In Canada, the federal government has said it expects immunization for the general population to begin sometime in April. Provincial health authorities will decide how to distribute the vaccine to their residents and the actual rollout could work differently in various parts of the country.
Jeff Leger is the president of Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s dominant pharmacy chain. He said contact between his company and provincial and territorial leaders has improved over the past week as provinces began to shift from phase one of the vaccine rollout — immunizing particularly vulnerable people, such as long-term care home residents, some Indigenous adults and health care providers — to planning for a wider rollout.
“I’m confident we’ll get some firm plans over the next couple of weeks. I would say they’re very interested in having our help,” Leger told CBC News.
Mike, a pharmacy manager at CVS Health, gets the COVID-19 vaccine ready at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, Mass. (Leon Nguyen/The Republican via AP Photo)
This week, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said the general population in his province would have access to shots by summer. Pharmacies are expected to play a crucial role in that effort.
Ontario detailed its immunization plans for the second phase of the rollout on Wednesday, indicating that pharmacies and clinics might be brought into the vaccination program as its focus shifts from long-term care homes to other populations.
“Some of the details around who will do the work within those [next] phases is now being fleshed out. We’ve been getting very positive feedback from the provinces who say that pharmacies will play a role in that — and I think they like the capacity,” Leger said.
The sheer number of vaccinations that pharmacies can administer is impressive.
During the last flu shot campaign, some of the company’s busiest stores were administering as many as 600 shots a day, Leger said. Shoppers Drug Mart and pharmacies owned by the Loblaw grocery chain vaccinated 500,000 people a week against the flu, he said — a figure that could have been even higher had there been more doses available.
Leger said that if all of Canada’s pharmacies are mobilized, several million shots could be delivered each week.
“I think it’s probably in the range of 2.5 to 3 million if all pharmacies are participating. The limiting factor is vaccine availability,” he said.
“As soon as it becomes available, we’re ready to help vaccinate. All Canadians would love for it to come as quickly as possible.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
