The Yukon Employees’ Union (YEU) is sounding an alarm over the way the territorial government is handling the after-effect of its vaccine rollout with its Department of Health and Social Services workers.

Over the weekend, Steve Geick, the president of the YEU, posted some startling numbers on social media.

“According to the YG Public Service Commission, roughly 60 per cent of Continuing Care staff were off sick yesterday, Friday Feb. 5,” he wrote on the YEU Facebook page.

“Group-vaccinated essential workers are dealing en masse with the side effects of their second shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.”

Geick said today he received updated numbers that indicated the 60 per cent figure was for a specific location, contrary to what he had originally been told.

“I’ll bet that’s pretty close to the figure for the department as a whole, though,” he said.

“I learned yesterday afternoon that a memo went out to YEU Continuing Care workers. If they were feeling unwell after their second shot, they were told to phone their scheduler, stay home and wait.

“Since the side-effects mimic COVID symptoms, someone from YCDC would phone them to discuss their symptoms and talk about next steps. These workers don’t know if they are off work for a day or a few days, and must isolate while they await instruction and testing,” he continued.

In an interview with the Star this morning, Geick expressed his concerns over a lack of consistency in how the situation is being handled.

Too many contradictory messages are being relayed to front-line workers affected by the situation, despite the instructions in the memo, he said.

Geick also said the number of people off work Friday due to side-effects from the second dose of the Moderna vaccine was likely unprecedented.

He said he comes from a nursing background, and that you can always expect some side-effects from a vaccine program, even for something like influenza.

However, he can’t remember an instance where so many people were affected, although a situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic is also unprecedented.

That information is not going to be good news to what’s being called the “vaccine hesitant” portion of the Yukon population.

As to why the government had not released that information to the public, he said he couldn’t offer a comment.

Geick said the government in general is continually inconsistent in how it’s handled this kind of situation during the pandemic.

The Department of Health and Social Services, he added, has been by far the worst culprit in not having a plan to handle instances like this with any consistency.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” Geick said.

“I’ve talked to them about it repeatedly, but it’s fallen on deaf ears.

“If they would just take a few more minutes to figure out what they want to do, it would be great,” he said.

“I get why they are doing it (sending workers home) but not how they are doing it. It’s very concerning. People shouldn’t have to use their sick leave for this situation.

“I did receive calls from people who were at work and told to go home, and were instructed to use sick leave. That’s total BS,” Geick said.

“I met with the Public Service Commission yesterday and told them there is no way people should have to use their sick leave; many are already using next year’s sick leave after the employer’s bad COVID leave practices.

“Auxiliary On-C (AOC) Employees have no sick leave to begin with, and Continuing Care operates on the backs of AOCs.”

Those AOC workers, Geick said, had already logged 300,000 hours in the last half of 2020.

They are called in to address temporary staff shortages when full-time workers aren’t available.

Geick said it was wrong to put them in that position, especially with so many workers out on Friday.

If the AOC workers don’t accept shifts, they won’t get paid, putting more pressure on them when they might be suffering from the same type of symptoms that were sending the permanent staff home

“One of my big concerns is those people,” Geick said.

He said that after meeting with the commission over the weekend, “the employer suggested that people will probably not need to use sick leave after all, but that hasn’t been confirmed.

“And if the use of sick leave/no sick leave is applied in a discriminatory way, YEU wants to know – we’ll act swiftly to correct that.”

Cabinet spokesman Matthew Cameron released this statement to the Star early this afternoon.

“Because of the vulnerable population that Continuing Care staff care for, all staff are encouraged to stay home at any sign of illness,” he wrote. 

“This precautionary step is taken to ensure that residents are safe and don’t come into contact with illness by way of the staff. This applies any time there is illness in the community, including COVID-19.

“Staff in long-term care began receiving their second dose of the Moderna vaccine last week,” Cameron added.

“It is normal that after the second dose a number of side effects will occur and individuals are advised of this possibility when receiving the immunization.

“Symptoms may present as similar to COVID-19 symptoms. This is actually a sign that the vaccine is working. However, if staff present with symptoms, they must either stay home or get tested.”

While some staff have been affected by the second shot, Cameron wrote, “it is not true that 60 per cent of continuing care workers were off the job on Friday.” 

Cameron quoted government figures indicating approximately 10 per cent of continuing care workers were absent on Friday.