Horwath calls for mobile vaccine teams for seniors, home care recipients and people with mobility challenges

For seniors like Holocaust survivor Susan Rochlitz, mobile teams are the only hope

QUEEN’S PARK — Official Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath is calling on the Ford government to organize, fund and deploy mobile teams to vaccinate people in their homes who are otherwise unlikely to get their shot – including home care recipients, housebound elderly people, and folks with disabilities.

“Seniors, people with mobility issues and folks with disabilities have suffered immensely during this pandemic. They need protection, and they need hope — and Ontario is months behind in offering them that,” Horwath said. “Doug Ford’s slow and sloppy vaccine rollout ignored this critically at-risk group. If I were premier, I’d fix that right now. For some it might be too late, but for others, we can urgently invest in their safety.”

In the legislature Tuesday, Horwath said a mobile program is the only hope for people like Susan Rochlitz, a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor in Toronto who is housebound, who has not yet been vaccinated because she cannot travel to a vaccination site. Her family has tried avenue after avenue to try to find a way to get her vaccinated, but haven’t been able to find a solution.

“My grandmother has been in mortal danger for a year, almost completely isolated from her family, including her two-year-old great-granddaughter, and we don't even have a date for her vaccination,” said Peter Trainor, Rochlitz’s grandson. “In the most profound sense, she doesn't have time to wait.”

Rochlitz is at daily risk of contracting COVID-19 because the PSWs she receives assistance from have not been vaccinated. They work for home care agencies, and there has been no coordinated effort by the government or agency to support staff to get their shot, the agency told the family.

“My grandmother survived being intentionally infected with typhus by Dr. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz, but it could be COVID-19 that kills her in the end, thanks to Doug Ford and his government’s messy, slow vaccine rollout, which has gaping holes for the most at-risk people to fall through,” Trainor said.

Ontario’s Science Table has called for mobile vaccination units to target communities where elderly people tend to live, and vulnerable or homebound older adults.

Experts say mass vaccination sites aren’t appropriate for many seniors due to the difficulty of navigating booking, risk of exposure to COVID-19, mobility issues, and the need to stand in lines — an impossibility for those who are especially frail.

*Photo of Susan Rochlitz with her great-granddaughter, taken before the pandemic, attached.