COVID-19 vaccine lands in Nunavik

Nunavik’s first batch of COVID-19 vaccines landed in the region over the weekend and community immunization clinics were scheduled to be up and running as of Monday, Jan. 18.

A shipment of 1,000 doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Kuujjuaq Jan. 16 by a chartered Air Inuit flight before the shipment was divvied up and flown to each of the region’s 14 communities.

Health-care workers will begin immunizing people at greatest risk: residents of long-term care facilities or elders’ homes and workers in those residences, as well as health-care or social services workers who have close contact with anyone at least 70 years old.

“If you are part of the priority population, your CLSC [nursing station] will contact you and provide the appropriate information,” the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services said in a Jan. 17 release.

“If you have not been contacted by the CLSC, you will be vaccinated during the general population vaccination [clinic], which will begin immediately after the priority population in February 2021.”

The health board expects the next batch of vaccines to arrive in the region at the beginning of February. Nunavik’s second priority group to receive the vaccine includes all health-care workers and first responders, adults with chronic diseases and any Nunavimmiut who are older than 55.

By mid-February, Nunavik’s public health department plans to deploy teams to host vaccination clinics in each of Nunavik’s 14 communities, to vaccinate the general population.

Nunavik’s health officials intend to offer the vaccination to Nunavik’s entire adult population by mid-March.

The health board has yet to determine when it will administer the second dose of the Moderna vaccine to Nunavimmiut. The World Health Organization recommends the second dose be given within 42 days.