Editor:
Re: “VCH missed memo on staying local,” Editorial, April 16.
John Gleeson doesn’t give Vancouver Coastal Health and the Ministry of Health enough credit. He calls VCH “consistently foolish” for closing vaccine sites and sending people off-Coast for their shots, but doesn’t mention that the same could be said of VCH and MoH’s performance through every stage of the vaccine rollout.
With a year to prepare, Adrian Dix did nothing to create a centralized booking system. When the rollout launched, only one of the five regional health authorities had online booking. The phone system crashed and in four days B.C. scheduled barely half the appointments that Alberta booked in two. With a straight face, John Horgan compared the meltdown to Wayne Gretzky having a bad game.
The recorded announcement for phone booking was inaccurate. Some people hung up, thinking they didn’t qualify. Hundreds more were denied appointments by phone agents armed with the wrong information.
When a provincial online booking system was finally launched, the main page said only those over 70 could register, although people much younger could actually do so.
On and on, one foul-up after another. Now residents are being sent off-Coast and no one can even tell them if they qualify for travel assistance. VCH blunders along and MoH seems incapable of leadership.
In Dix’s defence, it’s perhaps unfair to expect a phone agent based in Manitoba or Ontario to know that Gibsons and Golden are on opposite sides of our province. On the other hand, one might ask why Minister Dix allowed this vital work to be contracted out but didn’t take steps to assure that the rollout was structured as a make-work project for B.C.’s unemployed.
How is such ineptitude possible at this crucial stage of a once-in-a-century public health crisis?
Ian McLatchie, Davis Bay
