COVID costing millions more than Hamilton budgeted

Controlling COVID is costing Hamilton public health $4 million more than budgeted.

When we did this budget originally we didn't understand yet what the significance would be in waves two and three," Hamilton medical officer of health Dr. Elizabeth Richardson told the board of health on Monday. There have been significant expenditures ... related to COVID disease control."

The amount of resources the pandemic is taking up is evident by how under budget public health is for other mandatory programs - $6.6 million less than expected. Spending is less than half what was budgeted for dental care for seniors.

Much of what we do under those programs continues to be closed down as we reallocate resources to the COVID-19 response," said Richardson.

COVID vaccination is also under budget - to the tune of nearly $3 million as shots haven't been administered as fast as anticipated.

On the vaccine front, we had budgeted $7 million at the time expecting vaccine supply would continue unabated from December moving forward, but of course we had a significant slow down in February with the Pfizer vaccine," said Richardson.

The majority of the budget is staff with far more redeployed to the pandemic than planned. There are 494 full-time equivalents (FTE) working on COVID compared to 411 budgeted.

In comparison, less than half as many FTEs as planned are working on high-risk and essential programing - nearly 190 versus the just under 395 set out in the budget.

Hamilton is short about 122 FTEs because hiring during the pandemic has been so difficult.

That hiring ... has often been challenging because the skill sets that we are looking for ... are in very high demand," said Richardson. That hiring continues nonetheless."

These numbers don't include staff from the provincial and the federal governments helping with COVID case management and contact tracing.

Richardson said there are no concerns about ending up over-budget for the year overall despite COVID costing public health nearly $9 million for the year to date compared to the almost $5 million planned.

The overrun is more than made up by mandatory programs which have spent just $6.9 million of the $13.5 million budgeted.

Ultimately ... these budgets offset one another," she said.

Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter covering health for The Spectator. Reach her via email: jfrketich@thespec.com