February 18, 2021 Vol. 20, No. 07
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Health Unit To Work With Townships, Family Health Teams, For Rural Vaccinations
By Jeff Green he vaccine program in the rural parts of Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington (KFL&A) was slow in getting started and has gone dormant, due to a lack of vaccines, with only Pine Meadow Nursing Home residents and staff being on the receiving end of the needle. Late last week, residents and staff at Fairmount Home received their second dose. Dr. Kieran Moore, the medical officer of health, indicated in January that Senior's Residences, such as Brooks Landing in Perth Road, Country View Care in Godfrey and Sharbot Lake Retirement, are a priority, once the long term care home and health care worker cohorts are completed. The next priority group, says the Province of Ontario, will be seniors, starting with people who are over 80 years old. According to an email from KFLAPH, “the immunization strategy incorporates a variety of clinic types to be accessible to everyone in our communities. All clinics are designed to be flexible and scalable, to match provincial distribution of vaccines (Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines; others are anticipated) to our area. Currently, vaccine delivery is unpredictable, but we anticipate rollout will speed up significantly in March 2021.” The KFLAPH strategy includes mass immunization clinics at two sites in Kingston and one in Napanee, and plans are being developed for hospital clinics to immunise prioritised health care and essential workers. To serve the rural areas, two strategies are being developed. The first is a rotating, rural, remote site that will operate out of Family Health Teams, partnering to provide the service in rural northern areas. The second are mobile, strike teams, to go to identified sites, in order to support immunization in congregate, care settings. This is a similar approach to the one that public health
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Residentss at Fairmount Home in Glenburnie have recieved their second COVID-19 vaccinations.
has been using in long-term care and retirement home settings. “KFL&A Public Health is fortunate to be working with diverse partners (e.g., municipalities, Indigenous partners, first responders, health sector partners, Addictions and Mental Health, and many others) across our region to get clinics up and running. It truly is a whole of community effort,” said Suzette Taggart, Communications Manager with KFLAPH. Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith, who is also the long time Board Chair and acting administrator (on a volunteer basis), at the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team, said that township staff and health team staff are beginning to plan for a roll-out in the township.
“We have a model to work from, since we held a very successful flu shot clinic in Sharbot Lake in the fall. The township fire department, paramedics, community groups, and the family health team all worked together. We might be able to use that as a model, but we will have to look at locations and other factors if we are going to do something in April, which is when Public Health expects to be ready with a supply for us to use.” she said. The differences between the flu shot clinic and the vaccine are significant, however, particularly as the target for the first mass vaccination program is the over 80 and over 70 population, many of whom will not be able to attend drive through clinics on their own. ■
New Report Questions Goat Dairy Plans for Prison Farm by Jeff Green ack in the summer of 2018, the day the “cows came home”, to Joyceville Penitentiary, was a good day for Liberal Party politicians and the activists in the Save our Prison Farms organisation. After the Harper government decided to close the Kingston area prison farms, the group raised funds to purchase some of the animals in the herd. This was done to protect the genetics in the herd and to signal that the local agricultural community in Kingston and Frontenac County intended to keep up the political pressure to reopen the prison farms someday. Liberal Party politicians seized on the prison farm issue before and during the election campaign of 2015. Once elected, they began to work on a plan to revamp the prison farm program and bring the cows home. It took three years, but in the summer of 2018, local, regional and national media were
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invited to join with government officials and Save Our Prison Farm activists on a dusty, windy morning, as a few of the cattle, that had been under the care of local farmers, went back to jail and politicians and prison officials talked about a rejuvenated prison farm program that was being developed. One of the reasons it took three years, for the Liberal government to deliver on their promise to restart the prison farm program, was that it had to be different. Changes in regulations made it impossible for milk and eggs, produced on prison farms, to be consumed within the prisons, and with no milk quota available to sell milk to Ontario consumers, there was no ready place for the milk to go. A group calling itself Evolve Our Prison Farms, founded by Calvin Neufeld, said that instead of trying to find a way to transition the prison farm to a new dairy or
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Paul Lindsay & his neighbours on Oborne Point Road on Skootamatta Lake, near Cloyne have constructed a curling rink on the lake. Not regulation by any means, it has provided them an opportunity to socialize in a Covid safe manner, by limiting players and social distancing. Calling it the 1:33 Curling Circle after they meeting time, they have played almost every day since early January, sun or snow. Snow means a lot of sweeping making them appreciate the curlers in Scotland ages ago.
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