Alberta government postpones vaccination of meatpacking plant workers

Workers at the Cargill meat processing plant in High River are losing hope of getting the vaccine. Three people died at this plant last spring and about a thousand workers, along with their families, tested positive for COVID-19.

Another outbreak this year has claimed the lives of ten more people. Despite the tragic consequences, the Alberta provincial government has been slow to take action. Such inaction undermines the already shaky confidence of workers.

The clinic at the plant site was scheduled to begin April 22 and immunize more than 2,000 workers. However, Alberta Health said the event has been postponed due to a delay in delivery of 64,000 doses of Moderna vaccine originally scheduled for this week.

Currently, anyone over the age of 40, regardless of where they work, can make an appointment with the province for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, and people with eligible health conditions or over the age of 65 can make an appointment for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (Moderna).

1,600 workers at a meat processing plant signed up for a local clinic and never waited for centralized vaccinations from the company.

Worker dissatisfaction and delay could have been avoided if the government had been more flexible. As of April 19, Alberta had received 1.4 million doses of vaccine from the federal government. By Tuesday, 1.3 million of those doses had been distributed across the province.

Priority, in this case, should be given to people who work in crowded work environments like meatpacking plants. Also, in addition to Moderna, Alberta has other vaccines and could provide them to Cargill workers.

The 30 volunteer doctors, nurses and medical graduates who planned to arrive on site to help answer workers' questions in their native language are now waiting to find out when they can help.

Meanwhile, the top management of the meat processing plant is fighting off lawsuits from workers and their families, which are growing daily.