Calgary woman travels to Fort McMurray to help with vaccine rollout

FORT MCMURRAY ( 660 NEWS ) — A Calgary woman calls the decision to head to Fort McMurray to help with the vaccine rollout a “no brainer”.

Taylor Chyzowski worked for West Jet before the pandemic and spent her free time traveling the world. But she’d never been to Fort McMurray before this month.

Chyzowski responded to a friend’s Facebook post, looking for people to help with administration at Fort McMurray COVID-19 vaccine clinics.

“My friend was surprised that I agreed to go,” she says, adding “In less than two hours I was on a plane to Fort McMurray.”

Living in Calgary, she told 660 News that she didn’t even realize that the northern city was experiencing an outbreak before she arrived.

“When I got there some of the nurses were showing me articles that they’d just had a state of emergency,” she explains, adding “Dr. Deena Hinshaw was talking about how bad the outbreak was at that specific plant while we were there, so I was a little alarmed.”

Fort McMurray has been one of Alberta’s hotspots throughout the pandemic. 

LISTEN: 660’s Devon Banfield spoke with Taylor Chyzowski about her time working at a Fort McMurray vaccine clinic

 

Chyzowski says that despite the higher case count, she felt protected as she had already been vaccinated.

“I was a little worried,” she says, explaining “you can still get COVID when you’re vaccinated, but the chances are a lot lower.”

According to numbers released by Alberta Health Services on May 23, over 40 per cent of people in Fort McMurray have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. 

“We were mainly vaccinating people who worked in the plants and oilsands,” Chyzowski said, adding that they were asking workers to come back with their wives and families, encouraging as many people to get vaccinated as possible.

 

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If the opportunity presented itself, Chyzowski says that she would jump at the chance to return.

“It’s really important to vaccinate people. I’m immunocompromised and have asthma so it’s really important to me. Everyone just wants to get back to normal,” she explains, adding that the only way we can do that is by getting people vaccinated.

On average 48.2 per cent of Albertans are partially vaccinated, with 7.9 per cent fully vaccinated. As of May 22, 2,506,919 COVID-19 vaccine doses had been given out province-wide.

 

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