CORNER BROOK, N.L. — Richard Williams figured he’d get the COVID-19 vaccine sooner or later, so when presented with the opportunity to get it earlier this week the 82-year-old Corner Brook man took it.
Williams was among 49 residents and 18 employees of Mountain View Retirement Centre in the city to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday.
The home is one of the first private facilities in the province to have residents and staff vaccinated.
Williams said a pandemic is not something he ever thought he’d be living through and it hasn’t been easy.
He spent the first few months of the pandemic living in his own home, but felt lonely. His wife of 63 years died a year and a half ago.
He would take his dog for a walk every morning along the Corner Brook Stream Trail.
“Then when I came back it was me and her there. She on the back of the chesterfield and nothing on television to watch. Me there, sitting looking out through the window.
“I got a bit depressed then, of course.”
Later, he spent four months with his son in Toronto and took his dog with him. He had to leave the dog behind when he came back to the city to live at Mountain View in October.
“That’s about the only bad thing about it all,” he said, adding that living at the home is better than he ever thought it would be.
“I don’t talk very much, but I’m a people person. I don’t like to be by myself.”
Now he’s around people a lot more and discovered he already knew a few of the residents, and has even connected with family he didn’t know he had.
As for getting the vaccine, Williams said he doesn’t mind getting needles.
“They gave me this yesterday,” he said Thursday as he felt for the spot on his arm where he was given the injection, but couldn’t tell where it had been.
He also wasn’t worried that the vaccine is new.
“They test stuff,” he said.
“We still don’t know, I suppose, exactly what’s going to happen. You think about it, but, I mean, somebody’s got to do it.
“I guess we’re going to have to wait for time to find out whether the needle I got yesterday is going to do something.”
Williams will receive a booster shot in about three weeks.
Mountain View was identified by Western Health as one of the first private locations on the west coast to receive the vaccine.
Shelley Taylor is the new general manager of the home.
She said the screening and consent process for the vaccination is very detailed and it’s helpful to have someone with a medical background to go through the process with participants.
The consent form for the vaccine consists of a four-page questionnaire, and there is also a COVID information sheet to be reviewed.
Taylor is a registered nurse with management experience and that background is helpful in answering questions that participants may have.
“So that the residents can make a very informed decision as to whether or not they want to have the vaccination,” she said.
Taylor said the residents really thought about the questions they wanted to ask and they understood exactly what having the vaccine meant for them.
She said it’s not a mandatory program and residents and staff make their own decisions about whether or not to be vaccinated. Another 37 residents and 15 staff members are still left to be vaccinated.
Throughout the pandemic the home has been doing a lot to protect its residents, including visitation by appointment, and limiting the number of visitors to 10 in the home at a time. Each resident can have six designated visitors.
Residents also practice socially distancing at events and in the dining room.
Taylor said having the vaccine won’t change the way the home operates.
“Because at this point we need herd immunity for us to even look at changing our lifestyle in the community. But it will give the residents a sense of comfort to know that they’ve been vaccinated and that there’s hope. Because they’re scared, they’ve been scared and this is something now that’s going to alleviate that for them,” she said.
“This is not going to allow us to be complacent in what we have in place right now. There’s going to be a lot more determining factors before we can actually look at taking our guidelines and changing them.”
Diane Crocker reports on west coast news.
