Ottawa vaccination clinic cancels appointments due to staffing shortage

Photo via: PEXELS

An Ottawa vaccination clinic says it has cancelled upcoming appointments through Jan. 7 because of a staffing shortage.

In a tweet, the South-East Ottawa Community Health Centre said it would be calling anyone with appointments in that time to reschedule.

Executive director Kelli Tonner told CTV News Ottawa that six members of the clinic's staff are in isolation, limiting their ability to offer services.

"We have had some staff that have had exposure to Omicron and are isolating," Tonner said. "We also have to ensure that we are continuing with our core services - you know our food programs and our primary care - so we made the difficult decision to pause our clinics."

Tonner said the community health centre had administered vaccines to more than 1,000 people in the past ten days before they had to shut down.

"Fortunately we didn’t have too many appointments booked for next week," she said. "We have started calling everybody, rebooking those appointments. We will make sure that all those people who are in our clinics, that aren’t able to access vaccines elsewhere, that we do get them back in and on site and vaccinated the week after next."

Tonner expects the clinic to begin offering vaccines again by Jan. 10.

"We need to keep our staff safe and rested and able to continue supporting the community, not just in the short-term but in the long-term as well," she said. "That’s why we made some of the decisions that we made to pause our clinics for a week."

Ottawa Public Health says it is not experiencing any staffing shortages at OPH-led community clinics at this time.

Omicron-related staffing shortages putting businesses, health care under pressure

More than 5,600 people in Ottawa have active cases of COVID-19, which require that they and their households isolate for 10 days under provincial guidelines. The guidance comes as the testing system is under strain, meaning PCR tests to rule out COVID-19 are difficult to obtain for many people, requiring them to isolate because of symptoms. This has prompted a number of local businesses to temporarily close their doors to limit contacts with customers.

Health care is also under strain from a shortage of staff.

Quebec recently made the move to allow health-care workers who have tested positive to continue to work on a case-by-case basis because of staffing shortages. Ontario's chief medical officer of health is expected to announce new guidelines Thursday.

The Ottawa Hospital told CTV News Ottawa in a statement they are not experiencing a staffing shortage right now.

"The Ottawa Hospital has a staffing plan in place, in line with Ministry of Health recommendations, that allows us to balance staffing levels while ensuring the safety of everyone in hospital," the statement said. "Staff who have a known exposure to COVID-19 follow a process through Occupational Health and Wellness that assesses their risk and the next steps they should take. For example, if staff have an exposure but are asymptomatic, they may be placed on work self-isolation. This means they are under several precautions when coming into work, such as regular temperature checks, wearing PPE at all times, taking breaks alone, and limiting their work to one area."

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CTV News Ottawa some flexibility may soon be needed in Ontario.

"There’s so much Omicron around that there’s so many people who would be out of work that you’ve got to keep things going," he said.

"Obviously, you don’t want people coming out too soon and going back and mingling with others and then infecting other people, it’s clear you’ve got to find the right balance. I think if you’re going to shorten the period of isolation, you can at least make testing more readily available for those individuals; for example, a negative rapid test at five days or six days, or something in between five and seven days might be a very reasonable option to shorten that 10-day period of isolation."