Wrong addresses, long waits: problems persist with Manitoba’s vaccine rollout By: Larry Kusch and Jason Bell Posted: 7:15 PM CST Monday, Jan. 18, 2021 Last Modified: 8:41 AM CST Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021 Updates

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The Manitoba government faced new accusations of poor pandemic planning Monday, as reports of mismanagement swirled around the province’s two vaccination supersites.

A Winnipeg nurse told the Free Press Monday she waited too long to roll up her sleeve for the COVID-19 vaccine at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.

Meanwhile, opposition MLAs questioned the provincial government after hundreds of health-care workers received vaccine appointment reminders with the wrong address to the Brandon Keystone Centre vaccination clinic.

The Winnipeg nurse, who didn’t want to be named, said she had an appointment for a specific time at the convention centre early Monday afternoon, but didn’t leave the site until two hours later.

Everyone was wearing masks, but social distancing wasn’t ideal, she said.

“You definitely aren’t just in and out. You have so many people waiting and it’s not a good gathering area. We were separated and everyone’s wearing a mask, but to me it seemed kind of bizarre. We’re trained to stay apart and yet there’s 100 people in a room,” she said.

The woman stood with about 30 others in the initial check-in line and was then directed to a large waiting area where she was required to take a number.

“That area was full. Every chair was taken. I was No. 43 and they were on No. 3, so I waited with about 40 people and that took about an hour and 15 minutes for my number to be called. In the meantime, people just kept coming in, and some were forced to wait outside,” she said.

“Once they called my number, I was pulled to another waiting area where there were probably another 10 people in line. That’s where you could see where they’re giving the immunizations in an open area.”

As many as 30 tables were set up for the administration of vaccinations, but just a handful were being used, she said.

“I don’t know if they were just short of staff or what was going on,” she said.

The nurse, who has worked in a hospital and long-term care facility during her 10-year career, said she applied to be on the province’s immunization team but has yet to receive a shift.

“I don’t know how many people they have been recruiting to get hired. I put my name in a month ago… I did get an email a week ago saying they are looking into my application,” she said.

Her concerns are the latest bump in the road for the province, which remains among the slowest in the country to get its population vaccinated.

On Monday, opposition MLAs said the fact that an untendered contract was provided to a Quebec City-based company in late October to assist the province in alerting Manitobans about their vaccination appointments is another sign of poor planning by the Pallister government.

They also questioned what value the government is receiving for its $436,400 deal with PetalMD, given the company has now twice sent wrong address information in appointment reminders to prospective vaccine recipients.

The latest error saw 558 incorrect text messages go to health-care workers, directing them to the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg rather than to the Keystone Centre in Brandon. The government said the mistake was quickly discovered and corrected.

The error caused needless confusion and stress for the health-care workers who were scheduled to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, NDP Leader Wab Kinew said.

“Manitobans are rightly asking themselves how is it that the government keeps dropping the ball time and time again with what we know is probably the most important public health intervention in our lifetimes,” he said.

“If you’re going to rush into an untendered contract and you’re going to get such poor results, it probably tells you that maybe there could have been a better process in terms of figuring this whole thing out.”

Kinew and Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont wondered why the government did not send out the reminders itself, and if it needed private-sector help, why it did so in a rush.

“This is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, and they keep on making basic mistakes,” Lamont said.

In response to questions from the Free Press, a government spokesman said that PetalMD has assumed full responsibility for the error by one of its staff members.

Blake Robert said the province provided correct address information for the Brandon site to the contractor.

“The provider corrected the problem within two hours and assumed all costs of sending new SMS messages with the correct information,” he added.

The error was another embarrassment for the Manitoba government, which has been criticized for seemingly being unprepared for last fall’s second wave of coronavirus infections and for lagging behind other provinces in immunizing health-care workers and personal care home residents.

In an internal government email chain obtained by the New Democrats, government officials expressed frustration Sunday when they learned of the error. Senior treasury board official Paul Beauregard, whom Premier Brian Pallister has entrusted with a key leadership role in the vaccination rollout, said of PetalMD: “We are going to have to put them on training wheels.”

The error — and government officials’ exasperation over it — came to light when Beauregard inadvertently copied an NDP MLA in an email.

PetalMD provides online time management and communications services for the health-care system. It has over 37,000 physician users in more than 150 hospitals. The company’s marketing and communications department did not respond to repeated requests for comment Monday.

A few weeks ago, PetalMD sent messages to hundreds of health-care workers wrongly directing them to a Winnipeg clinic that had closed instead of the convention centre.

Michelle Gawronsky, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union, said the province “continues to be ideologically focused on contracting out and privatizing government work,” whether it makes sense or not.

The government, in a further statement early Monday evening, said PetalMD has considerable experience in scheduling, booking and secure messaging in the health-care field.

“They were originally engaged to manage appointments for new COVID-19 testing capacity that was added in October. This was done on an emergency basis in order to ensure that additional testing capacity could be brought online as soon as possible,” the statement said.

“When Manitoba received notice from the federal government that we would receive vaccine in mid-December (instead of February as we were initially told), the remaining preparation time shrunk from six weeks to four days. With the unscheduled, early delivery of initial vaccine supply from the federal government, there was a need to quickly mobilize vaccine appointments,” it said.

“Any delay in this approach would have meant our front-line health-care workers would not have begun receiving needed vaccinations in December as we were able to deliver. The existing agreement with PetalMD was the only option that could be operationalized in time for vaccination appointment scheduling to begin with four days notice. As such, that existing agreement was amended to include vaccination appointment services.”

— with files from Carol Sanders

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca