On a sunny spring afternoon, a queue forms leading to Mercer Junior General Public School in Toronto. There is a giant white tent and you can listen to music and laughter in the distance, and the atmosphere is festive.
What looks like a school fair and looks like a carnival is a contextual COVID-19 vaccination site that runs through Women’s College Hospital.
“This environment is exactly what I was looking for you to be,” said Janelle Noel, head of the vaccination site.
“We celebrate vaccines. We celebrate people. We celebrate leaving your house, all akin to getting better.
Behind the scenes in the school gym, you can see a team running diligently to prepare doses of the Modern vaccine for the arms of those waiting outside.
This is a prudent and focused effort through an organization of nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacy technicians and fitness workers.
“What we are doing here is essentially preparing and producing vaccines. We make sure to stick to the right protocols and comply with the rules of our hospital and ministry to make sure we distribute those doses with the greatest success and safety imaginable and that we give them to everyone who deserves them fairly,” explained registered assistant nurse Krissha Fortuna.
They are the anonymous heroes of vaccine deployment in Ontario, deployed from other fitness care stations to participate in the vaccine distribution procedure and in school gyms, locker rooms and other places to put vaccines in the hands of the public.
“I meet a taxi driver. I’m riding an Uber driver. I’m on the street, I tell them to beef when they can,” Fortuna said.
In the past he worked in long-term care where he reported contracting COVID-19 the first wave of the pandemic.
“I’m fully recovered now, but I’m still very scared because it was too early . . . the vaccine didn’t even exist at the time and I saw a lot of deaths, so it’s complicated, but now it’s like moving to a bigger positive chapter,” Fortuna added.
Noel also contracted COVID-19 and recovered. He said this was a component of the driving force of his efforts to vaccinate others living in hot spots as temporarily as possible.
“They were traumatized, affected by the fact that their schools had epidemics, and as a holistic technique to return and be part of the solution and vaccination. I think that was one of the reasons we made the decision to go back to some of the schools where we are,” Noel said.
Primary care nurse Lauren Scott said it is a “privilege” to be part of this phase of the pandemic. It is part of the Ontario Emergency Medical Assistance Team and care when Canadians returned from Wuhan, China.
“I was there in the airport hangar when the planes landed and I took one of the first COVID samples in Canada in the negative tension tent when we literally had no idea what we were dealing with. So now, coming here a day fifteen months later and being able to administer this life-saving vaccine is actually a privilege,” he said.
They save lives and replace their own along the way.
“I wasn’t sure what I was looking to do in the future. I was thinking about breastfeeding, but I wasn’t sure,” said Jennifer of the Franier angels, who works in the field of angels’ watchdogs’ vaccinations.
“Seeing how much it takes for a team reinforced my resolve to move to the infirmary. So I’m going to go to the infirmary in the fall. “