The Athabasca Health Authority has been seeing some recent success with their vaccine roll out.
The health authority’s CEO, Allan Adam said the uptake on vaccines has been good with many people getting inoculated. He added some of the health authority’s communities have really stood out.
“We’re quite happy, some of the communities are doing really well like Stony Rapids, Uranium City, Camsell Portage,” he said.
According to the Athabasca Health Authority, Uranium City and Camsell Portage have vaccinated over 80 per cent of their residents, while Stony Rapids has vaccinated close to 70 per cent of their residents. Meanwhile, Fond-du-Lac has vaccinated just over 30 per cent of their membership while Black Lake has inoculated close to 20 per cent.
(Graph From Athabasca Health Authority Facebook)
Adam credits the success in Camsell Portage and Uranium City to those communities being enthusiastic and having smaller populations.
“So it was easy the message got around really fast, then once it (vaccines) got there people just took advantage of it,” he said.
Some people in the region have gone the extra mile to get their vaccine. Adam said one resident from Uranium City, Sandy Powder traveled to Stony Rapids so he could get a vaccine.
“He drove all the way on the winter road on a quad four hours away just to get to his second shot and we thought that was pretty neat that he did that,” said Adam.
(Sandy Powder on his quad: Photo Courtesy of Athabasca Health Authority Facebook)
Since taking on the position of CEO in March, Adam explained he has been working to improve vaccine uptake by communicating with people using a number of channels. He added he has been a regular on Dene broadcaster Willie Billette’s radio show on MBC.
“We have a Facebook page that we share information on and that’s what I’ve been doing is just basically getting the message out there, and just talking to people, elders,” he said.
Currently there are no active cases of COVID-19 in any communities in the Athabasca basin, nor have there been any confirmed cases involving any variants of concern. Adam credits area First Nations for putting in place the right measures.
“The bands are taking measures into their own hands as band to make sure that the variants don’t come into the communities, by making sure people self isolate,” he said.
(Top Photo: Athabasca Health Authority CEO Allan Adam: Photo Courtesy of Athabasca Health Authority Facebook)