New vaccination rules leave residents of Quebec seniors' homes without on-site flu, COVID shots

Thousands in Quebec's Montérégie region will not get their flu and COVID-19 vaccine directly at their seniors' residence anymore.

The regional health agency says the service is now only offered to those who aren't mobile enough to get the vaccine off site.

Among those affected is Carole Richard's mother, 98-year-old Madeleine Landry, who lives in a private seniors' residence (RPA) on Montreal's South Shore.

"I find it counterproductive," said Richard, noting many seniors don't have a computer to get an appointment through the online service, Clic Santé.

"At the pharmacy, the waiting room was full. I was uncomfortable exposing my mother like that for such a long time before her turn," she said. "They were overwhelmed because people from all the surrounding residences were going there to get vaccinated."

Landry, who lives in Boucherville, Que., was determined to get her shots despite the change. However, she observed, not everybody has children nearby to drive them to a pharmacy for inoculation. Landry's RPA is one of about 100 seniors' residences in the region affected. Nearly 10,000 people live in these residences.

"It was surprising because I've been here for 13 years and we've always had it," said Landry.

But the local health agency, CISSS de la Montérégie-Est, says this is the way it was before the pandemic and things are just returning to normal.

"We therefore offer at-home vaccination services only to individuals who are unable to travel to get vaccinated," said spokesperson Caroline Doucet in an email.

Doucet said the CIUSSS's mobile vaccination teams visit long-term care facilities, care units within RPAs and other sites, including clients receiving home-support services, many of whom live in RPAs.

The Quebec association of pharmacy owners said members were caught off guard this year as, along with the South Shore, other health agencies in the Montreal area made the same decision. 

"We were not able to determine which seniors' homes on the island are impacted, but it puts added pressure on pharmacist's shoulders," said Geneviève Pelletier, a senior director with the Association québécoise des pharmaciens propriétaires (AQPP).

"Some of the difficulties that our members had is that it was not necessarily clearly planned from the outset when they were already planning their immunization services for influenza and COVID."

Quebec pharmacists were given the right to vaccinate in 2020. The association says the vaccination campaign is still going at a solid pace with more than a million doses administered so far.