Essex-Windsor EMS Paramedics Vaccinate Vulnerable Individuals at Home

It was an historic day Thursday when Paramedics with Essex-Windsor EMS began inoculating vulnerable residents in their home instead of having residents travel to mass vaccination clinics.

Members of the Essex-Windsor EMS Vulnerable Patient Navigator team vaccinated 44 residents of an apartment building who had pre-registered for the mass vaccination clinics for those aged 80 and over, but who would have had difficulty accessing sites in Windsor and Leamington.

The residents received their first dose of the Moderna vaccine and will be scheduled to receive a second dose. The VPN team plans to continue vaccinating eligible residents in the same apartment building and will then move on to another.

Mass vaccination sites have been set up at the WFCU Centre in Windsor and the Nature Fresh Farms Recreation Centre in Leamington.

A mass vaccination site is also expected to open soon at the Libro Centre in Amherstburg.

The respective municipalities are urgently recruiting residents to fill vital, non-medical roles crucial to the operations of the vaccination sites. Apply now!

For more information on the mass vaccination program being organized by the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit with support from local municipalities and partners including Essex-Windsor EMS, please visit the health unit’s vaccine page.

The Vulnerable Patient Navigator program was launched in 2016 to help ease the strain on the local ambulance service and reduce offload delays by working closely with patients who use emergency medical services more than three times per year.

The program holds clinics in high-rise apartment buildings and also deploys wireless devices to monitor blood pressure and other key health indicators.

In 2019, the VPN team held more than 100 Paramedicine clinics and made 607 home visits, making 298 referrals and administering 110 flu shots to vulnerable patients. More than 65 patients were outfitted with remote monitoring equipment.