MONTREAL -- Now that many residents at Maimonides Geriatric Centre who wanted a COVID vaccine have gotten one, health authorities have a new challenge on their hands: addressing the vaccine hesitancy that exists among its employees.

“It is a super-priority,” the associate CEO of the West-Central-Montreal CIUSSS told CTV News during a phone interview.

Francine Dupuis confirmed that while 95 per cent of residents agreed to be inoculated, only 35 to 40 per cent of employees have signalled a desire to get the shots, a rate that she says “is very low.”

“Every effort is on the table to try and convince the health professionals to be vaccinated,” said Francine Dupuis.

A union that represents the majority of nurses, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists in the province, has also made its position clear.

“We strongly suggest to our members to get the vaccine,” said Denyse Joseph, the vice-president of the Federation interprofessionelle de la sante du Quebec (FIQ).

Joseph says they will provide their 70,000 members with information and “sensitize” them about the new vaccine to help them make the best “personal decision.”

The issue is important to Joyce Shanks, the daughter of a Maimonides resident, she says.

Her elderly father got the Pfizer COVID vaccine yesterday, along with 142 other residents and five employees, according to the health ministry’s latest vaccination figures.

The 81-year-old is in good spirits today, eating and reading his magazines -- and he has suffered no ill effects, says his daughter.

But Shanks, who leads a families’ advocacy group, says it’s “concerning” that so few staff have stepped forward to get the shot themselves.

“We’re respectful of the fact that people need to make their own decisions, but I think the majority of us on the advocacy committee want them to be vaccinated to continue to protect our loved ones," she said.

It would be another layer of protection, Shanks said, especially since many of the vaccines being developed so far are expected to protect against serious disease, but won’t necessarily prevent someone from catching the virus altogether.

On the other hand, Dupuis said, healthcare workers are well protected by “the equipment that we give them,” and if they develop symptoms they’re not allowed to work.

Vaccine-hesitant employees at Maimonides generally gave one of two reasons in explaining their decision, she said.

Either they “do not believe vaccination is a good thing,” or they prefer to wait until more is known about possible adverse effects since the vaccine is new, she said.

Feeling anxious about receiving a new vaccine is understandable, says a public health expert at the Universite de Montreal.

Professor Benoit Masse says it’s possible healthcare workers at geriatric facilities who are much younger than most of the residents feel that “they don’t have the same risk level, and so I’m not going to expose myself [to the vaccine] right now.”

Indeed, the level of vaccine-agreement changes from one institution to another, with hospital workers generally having higher vaccination rates than long-term care centres, according to Dupuis.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

The only way to address the public’s concerns is to meet them head-on with timely and accurate information and science, experts say.

Transparency on the part of companies, countries and health authorities will be critical, especially when a negative health event seems -- rightly or wrongly -- connected to the vaccine, something infectious diseases specialist Dr. Michael Libman says is inevitable.

“There will be, sooner or later, someone who has a bad side effect or by coincidence, something bad happens to them right after they're vaccinated," he said.

"It’s going to happen. It’s an absolute certainty. You can’t give millions and millions of doses of anything, not even vitamin C, without somebody having an allergic reaction, and that will, I’m afraid, get a lot of publicity and it will scare people and it will make some things more difficult.”

Masse of the Universite de Montreal agrees, saying “disinformation is our enemy.”

The researcher provides the hypothetical example of a 90-year-old man receiving the vaccine and dying two weeks later -- but perhaps from a pre-existing health condition or age.

Or, he says, what he expects to happen “is what we call vaccine failure. That is you vaccinate someone and a week later he has a serious case of COVID and people will say, see, the vaccine doesn’t work.”

Both hypothetical occurrences would have to be investigated quickly and explained publicly, says Masse.

The only way to battle disinformation is to get ahead of it, to be proactive, and so the professor suggests authorities release weekly updates about the number of people who have been vaccinated, along with any adverse health reactions, to reassure the public.

The reports should contain an analysis of the relative rate of each adverse event, he said, so that people can assess the risk for themselves.

We may have more answers in a matter of a few short weeks, as the UK, the United States, Canada and other countries get deeper into their COVID vaccine campaigns.

By then, perhaps a couple of a million people will have been vaccinated and we will know much more, Masse says, about a vaccine “that was developed in record speed” -- but has also been peer-reviewed extensively for its safety.