The Hockey Hub Mass COVID-19 Immunization clinics created in Grey Bruce are now being used on the other side of the globe in New Zealand.
Grey Bruce Medical Officer of Health Dr. Ian Arra, who came up with the Hockey Hub model, says over 16,000 people took part in a mass vaccination event in New Zealand, based on the model. The three-day clinic, running July 30th to August 1st, averaged just over 5,000 clients per day.
Coordinators are describing this as the largest vaccination clinic in New Zealand. “We are thrilled that many people have been benefiting from this innovation,” says Arra.
Arra says, since February, his health unit has been holding ‘knowledge sharing sessions’ on a regular basis with multiple health units, hospitals and provincial and international health authorities, “We share the documents that we have on the system whether it’s the job description of individuals, or the layout of the arena or the different functions,” says Arra.
He explains, “The mass immunization system we developed here in Grey Bruce, it seems that in New Zealand, one of the health authorities was researching different methods of mass immunization and they came across our publication. They emailed me, and we invited them to one of these sessions that we do regularly and we provided the information. Their managers had more questions and they got answered through our team,” says Arra.
This past weekend, at the Vodafone Events Centre in Manukau, Auckland, a dozen vaccinators – averaging an injection every 90 seconds – worked across 240 booths. The event was fully booked, and patients were bussed there from the Manukau Institute of Technology.
A second dose event is planned there for September.
Arra says while the Hockey Hub is his brainchild, it has taken a community to make these hubs successful in Grey Bruce, “You cannot materialize it without the team, without the support from the municipality, the partners. Bruce Power obviously, has donated the equipment and helped in setting them up,” says Arra, who also notes the Province has played a big role in supporting the vaccination effort.
Over the course of the pandemic, Arra’s Hockey Hub model has also been adopted across Manitoba and Alberta, as well as in the GTA with Peel Public Health setting up a mass immunization hub in Brampton with the assistance of Arra and his team, and Bruce Power.
Arra says this is one of the innovative approaches to fulfilling Public Health’s strategic vision for a Grey Bruce centre of excellence in rural public health, “That’s a vision that we had before the pandemic, to turn our health unit into a centre of excellence and it has many different approaches and this is one of them,” says Arra who notes, “In this case it paid off internationally, not just provincially.”