Things are starting to return to enterprise as common on the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit.

Members of County of Simcoe council acquired a short replace from the native board of well being earlier this week, together with how the COVID-19 pandemic was managed over the past three years, in addition to present efforts to get issues again to regular.

The well being unit accredited a brand new strategic plan final week, famous medical officer of well being, Dr. Charles Gardner, who was joined by board chair Ann-Marie Kungl and vice-chair Scott Warnock on the assembly.

Gardner stated each the well being unit’s imaginative and prescient and mission stays the identical. 

“The strategic plan otherwise replaces a recovery plan that we’ve had underway for the last two years,” he defined.

“Through the pandemic we became very high profile in response to that health emergency … and that is certainly a big part of our mandate, vaccinations and response to outbreaks and emergencies,” Gardner added. “We work very closely with municipalities on a number of the programs we provide, including general emergency community response and emergency preparedness.”

Gardner listed the various methods the native well being unit works to stop power illness, in addition to its function within the surveillance and reporting of the well being standing of the group. 

“We are popping out of — contact on wooden — probably the most extreme pandemic of the century. Sadly, we misplaced greater than 16,000 folks on this province from the pandemic, however in line with the (province’s) chief medical officer of well being’s report on the pandemic, if we’d not all … labored collectively and did all we did we most likely would have had 20 instances that mortality,” he stated.

Simcoe County achieved an 80 per cent vaccination fee in opposition to the virus, stated Gardner, which helped cut back the mortality fee regionally. 

Throughout the final three years, the well being unit needed to preserve a few of its common programming, he added, nevertheless nearly all of employees had been redeployed throughout the response.

“Certain things simply couldn’t stop … including things like responding to animal bites, continuing to respond to the opioid crisis,” Gardner cited as examples.

This restoration plan has been within the works for 2 years, but it surely has been a problem to get it underway, he acknowledged, including it has solely been since January 2023 that the various well being unit employees have been in a position to return again to their regular programming roles.

“This framework is definitely being changed as of final Wednesday with a brand new strategic plan … but it surely builds on the restoration framework and has a give attention to program restoration, folks restoration, partnership restoration and renewal and seeking to the long run and making the case for the sources wanted to the province,” Gardner stated.

The physician additionally highlighted a number of issues that the Simcoe-Muskoka well being unit is getting again underway, together with its routine immunization program, which he stated will possible take them into subsequent yr to realize.

Simcoe County Warden Basil Clarke, who can be the mayor of Ramara Township, was curious how the statistics for the latest yr search for the “plain old flu shot.”

“I think we have experienced some degree of vaccination fatigue,” Gardner said. “After all, there are some people in the community for whom this would be their sixth dose of COVID (vaccine) at this time. With that, there was perhaps some reduction in the uptake of influenza vaccination last year. We will see what happens in the fall … (but) we did have a resurgence of influenza and RSV. We will do what we can to promote it and other vaccinations.”

Being on the board of well being throughout a pandemic is “not for the faint of heart,” acknowledged Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dolin, adding she appreciated the “calm and confident” management supplied by Gardner and the senior management group on the native well being unit.

“Through some pretty personal threats from people, we were quite concerned,” she said. “It’s always the messenger that gets the brunt of it. But all through a calm and steady hand on the wheel all throughout it. Had we not had that, we would have been in much worse shape.”