National group winding down, but Vaccine Hunters Alberta will carry on

While Vaccine Hunters Canada has announced it will be winding down operations by the end of August, replacing its social media presence with a self-serving tool, the group's Alberta counterpart will carry on.

Unlike the national group, the Alberta effort does more than just book vaccine appointments for people looking for protection against COVID-19, a spokesperson told CBC's Edmonton AM on Monday.

Sarah Mackey, one of the three volunteers with Vaccine Hunters Alberta, said the group has also been involved in advocacy work around vaccines, combatting misinformation, and making sure people understand the constant stream of new information coming out about vaccines. 

"We just don't feel like that job is done yet," she said. 

"And especially because vaccine rates in Alberta are lower than in the rest of the country, there's still a lot of people out there who need their vaccines."

According to aggregate data compiled by CBC News, 76.1 per cent of Alberta's eligible population (age 12 and up) had received a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of July 15.

Nationally, 81.6 per cent of eligible Canadians had received a first dose by that date.

Vaccine Hunters started out in Ontario in March of this year during the early days of vaccine rollouts, when finding appointments was akin to finding a needle in a haystack. 

The web-savvy volunteers used social media to help Canadians book vaccinations.

In April, three Edmonton women — Mackey, Janaya Matheson and Sara Borchiellini — started the Alberta Vaccine Hunters Twitter account.

Mackey said they learned early on they need to do more than just vaccine appointments. 

Whether it is documentation, scheduling conflicts, transport or simply not being informed on where vaccines were available, Mackey said they found a lot of reasons why so many eligible Albertans are not vaccinated. 

Another reason why the group believes they need to stick around a bit longer is for when vaccines for kids under the age of 12 get rolled out. "We can already see there's going to be a ton of misinformation around kids under 12 once they're eligible," she said.

She said despite public perception, in her experience majority of the people currently not vaccinated are not anti-vaxx or even vaccine-hesitant. 

"They just need a little bit of extra support, a bit of extra outreach, and we can bring those numbers up so much higher than they are now," she said.

When asked whether they have any plans of closing down operations, Mackey said the unpredictable nature of vaccine information has left little room for making predictions of their future.