‘Incompetence or Sabotage?’ Alberta Can’t Get Vaccines to Doctors’ Offices

How is it possible Alberta’s health department “has not been successful in contracting a distributor to ship vaccines to community medical and nurse practitioner clinics,” as a memorandum leaked to the CBC informed family doctors and nurse practitioners?

“As a result, a vendor for vaccine distribution will not be in place by October 15 for the start of the influenza and COVID vaccine program,” said the memo, although the CBC did not appear to quote it in full or provide a copy.

According to the CBC’s story, “the distribution problem impacts a number of publicly funded vaccines,” also including the whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria vaccine.

The Alberta Medical Association expressed serious concern that, as a result, many patients who might get a shot from their family doctor won’t be bothered or able to get to a pharmacy or public health clinic, where Alberta Health (not to be confused with Alberta Health Services) has advised them to go.

On the face of it, this makes no sense.

How can there have been no expression of interest by distributors, as the CBC reported Alberta Health claimed in the memo? For that matter, why does the health department’s attitude to this development appear to be so ho hum? And why, for heaven’s sake, was the contract with the previous distributor allowed to expire?

This explanation — such as it is — doesn’t pass the sniff test.

A health department spokesperson told the CBC, “We are actively exploring options to distribute vaccines from our provincial depot to community medical clinics.”

But when reporter Jennifer Lee asked the former distribution company about what was going on, the president of the health care logistics corporation told a different story. “Our contract was not renewed,” said Dean Berg of Accuristix. “But we’d be pleased to help AHS with the physician distribution and hope to hear from them.” Meanwhile, in other provinces, the fall respiratory vaccination program for influenza and COVID-19, both killers of the vulnerable elderly in particular, proceeds apace.

Given the MAGA conspiracy based attitudes about vaccines held by Premier Danielle Smith and many members of her United Conservative Party cabinet and caucus, the circumstances described by Lee have raised hackles and suspicions.

“Good lord,” said Jon Meddings, former dean of the Cummings School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. “How far does the incompetence go? AB health has not figured out a way to distribute vaccines to FM offices since April? Is there nothing this government won’t do to make family practice difficult?”

“Alberta’s anti-vax UCP government won’t be distributing COVID and flu vaccines to family doctors this fall,” said Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan on X, asking: “Incompetence or outright sabotage?”

“I think the case for outright sabotage is strong,” Mr. McGowan added in another tweet. “Zero expressions of interest tells me the government didn’t put a serious offer on the table.”

Well, that’s one explanation. Another might be that the government has a favoured distributor, and negotiations are either ongoing, or the distributor would prefer the vaccines didn’t go to family doctors for some reason.

It’s very hard to reach a conclusion, other than that a serious problem has developed for reasons that don’t make sense. So it’s presumably about time for Health Minister Adriana LaGrange to step up to the microphone and give us her usual confusing word salad.

In the meantime, deaths from COVID in Alberta jumped to 44 last week from 23 the week before. “We’re in another wave,” said Calgary physician Joe Vipond, who has been tracking and making accurate predictions about the disease since the start of the pandemic.

Again, so far at least the UCP government doesn’t appear to be particularly engaged — understandable, perhaps, when there are more important issues like chemtrails, federal truth-in-advertising laws and the potential for a negative leadership review for the premier at the party’s Nov. 1 and 2 annual general meeting in Red Deer.

Or perhaps they’re just recalling former UCP premier Jason Kenney’s calming words about COVID in the Legislature back in 2020. “The average age of death from COVID in Alberta is 83, and I’ll remind the House that the average life expectancy in the province is 82,” he said cheerfully.

So if you’re much over 80 in Alberta, you should still just be grateful that you’ve lived this long, I guess.

Meanwhile, Shoppers Drug Mart has been sending out text messages to clients reading, “Beat the rush, book your flu shot now for appointments starting on October 15.”

Earlier this month, the Edmonton-based Progress Report reported on how since 2021 AHS management has been pressuring “health-care professionals at two downtown Edmonton mental health clinics to transfer their patients’ prescriptions to Shoppers Drug Mart.”

A source provided the publication with an April 9, 2021, memo to employees at the 108th Street clinic that said Shoppers had been “contracted by AHS as the primary pharmacy services provider” for the clinic, the publication reported.