Essential workers seek to be vaccinated as Manitoba talks about pivoting to target COVID-19 hotspots

A Winnipeg grocery store manager who saw a beloved member of his staff die of COVID-19 wants to see grocery workers prioritized for immunization.

Shirley Picca, 70, who worked as a cashier at the West Broadway Food Fare, diedin Decemberafter spending several weeks on a ventilator in intensive careafter she contracted COVID-19.

"It hits home when you know someone that's close to you and you've known them for a long time and they pass away from COVID-19,"saidRamsey Zeid, the manager of the Maryland Street store.

"If we had been vaccinated at the time, who knows if it would've made a difference or not."

Zeid and Picca's son say they don't know where she contracted COVID-19 but don't believe she got it at work because she was off for a couple weeks before testing positive. No one else at the store became sick.

Manitoba's vaccine task force is pivoting to target certain workers or hotspots where case numbers are high, now that people 59 and older are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

In this re-evaluation, Zeid hopes grocery store workers and other essential workers will be top of mind.

"If everybody goes into lockdown, we're still going to be open. I think that we should be prioritized. Peopledon't realize we get a few hundred people come into the store every day," he said.

"You never know who has [COVID-19], who doesn't have it. It would put a lot of people's minds at ease."

WATCH | Dr. Joss Reimer on how Manitoba will best reach highest risk people:

Dr. Joss Reimer says Manitoba is working to "fine-tune" vaccine eligibility criteria

4 years ago

Duration 1:06

Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead of Manitoba's vaccine task force, said Wednesday the task force is looking at vaccine eligibility and may consider tailoring criteria to include younger people at risk or essential workers.

Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead on thetask force, said at a news conference Wednesday thata team of experts is in the process of determining whether any other groups should be made eligible for the vaccine, especiallyfor people living in areas with higher transmission rates.

"We have seen in Wave 2, and are starting to see in Wave 3 as well, that certain parts of the province, certain geographic areas, are at higher risk of transmissiongenerallyand at higher risk of the severeoutcomes," Reimer said.

"We're asking that team to come up with a plan for how we best reach the people at highest risk, and they are working out the details of that as we speak."

Lessons from B.C. and Ontario

Those details could be formed, in part, from the example of other jurisdictions, including B.C. andOntario.

Manitoba's neighbour to the east announced it was quicklypivoting to try to vaccinate people 18 and up living in high risk neighbourhoods.

"As we speak, mobile vaccination teams are being organized to get vaccines to where they will have the greatest impact," Premier DougFord said last week, during his news conference announcing Ontario's new stay-at-home order.

In B.C., more than 300,000 front-line workers, including first responders, grocery store employees,teachers and child care workers will be vaccinated in the coming weeks.

The province is targeting areas where outbreaks are ongoing, andcongregatefacilities, like camps, food processing facilities and ski hills.

A similar tactic could take place in Winnipeg, according to public health officials who announced pop-ups scheduled in rural Manitoba, where COVID-19 and more contagious coronavirus variant numbers are low, would be postponed in favour of targeted pop-ups in Winnipeg where the five-day test positivity rate was 5.2 per cent on Wednesday.

The Seven Oaks and River East health districts have the highest numbers of active cases with 91 and 77, respectively.

Reimer also said the vaccine task force isanalyzing available data to determine whether certain categories of essential workers should be made eligible for the vaccine.

The union that represents many front-line workers, including those who work in grocery stores, in food processing facilities and in security, says it's "taken way, way too long" to make this decision.

"They've been talkingabout considering essential workers for the last four months and in the meantime these people have, for a third of the year, spent their days in stores on the streets of Winnipeg as security guards, in assisted living centres, putting themselves at risk and still they're not going to be vaccinated based on anything other than their age," said Jeff Traeger, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832.

He worries this decision will take so longthat workers in their 20s and 30s who are exposed to the virus and variants will have to wait for their age group to become eligible.

"You delay a decision long enough and you never have to make it and it feels like that's what this government is doing," Traeger said.

Winnipeg police and transit workers have also been vocal about needing vaccines because of their contact with the public.

Reimer said the details of the rollout will be made public "very soon."

Essential workers in Manitoba seek to be vaccinated

4 years ago

Duration 2:37

A Winnipeg grocery store manager who saw a beloved member of his staff die of COVID-19 wants to see grocery workers prioritized for immunization.