Warren County extends hours at COVID-19 testing site to meet increased demand
Updated Dec 19, 2020;
Posted Dec 19, 2020
The Warren County COVID-19 Patient Testing Center is staffed by 40 county employees and St. Luke s volunteers. The testing center opened on April 8, 2020, for county residents only. The testing site is located on the campus of Warren County Technical School. Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com
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Increase demand at Warren County’s drive-through COVID-19 testing site means the county will expand the site’s hours and availability of the call center that helps schedule appointments.
The site opened Dec. 1, and offers testing on Tuesdays and Fridays with St. Luke’s University Health Network at the Belvidere Health Center, 187 County Route 519 in White Township.
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“We absolutely don’t want any wasted doses,” Roussin said.
He said if someone does not show up for an appointment, front-line staff from a nearby hospital are brought in for the shot.
There have been a few cases this week in Ontario where people who were scheduled for vaccinations were unable to get them, said Ana Fernandes, a public affairs adviser for the University Health Network.
The Ontario government has prioritized people working in long-term care homes in its COVID-19 vaccination pilot sites and there are strict criteria for who can take it.
Fernandes said officials have created a list of people who work in emergency rooms, intensive care departments and COVID-19 units in nearby hospitals. Twice a day, if there are unused doses, calls are made to people on the list.
No wasted doses: Health officials making plans to ensure no vaccine tossed away
by Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press
Posted Dec 18, 2020 4:19 pm EDT
Last Updated Dec 18, 2020 at 4:26 pm EDT
Some health officials say they are making plans to ensure not a single drop of COVID-19 vaccine is wasted.
Many regions have created standby lists of health-care workers in hospitals near vaccination clinics, so those workers can be called for any spare doses that need to be administered fast.
“We don’t want any wastage of such a scarce resource like this,” Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba’s chief provincial public health officer, said Thursday.
1st COVID-19 vaccine recipients say it s history made for Filipino-Canadians
by Erica Natividad and Theresa Redula
Posted Dec 18, 2020 3:48 pm EDT
Tamara Dus (left), director of University Health Netwok Safety Services, administers the first Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Ontario to personal support worker Anita Quidangen at a hospital in Toronto on Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)
Three of the first five people to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Canada were Filipino-Canadian, a moment significant to the Filipino community, who for decades has played a major role in the nation’s healthcare system.
About one in every 20 caregiving professionals in Canada are Filipino and with frontline workers the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s no surprise they played a large role in the historic inoculations.