Daily COVID-19 digest
Thank you for your participation: Thank you to everyone who was able to join Graham for the live Q&A today. We noticed that participation numbers were even higher than our last event — so we are happy to see employees continue to find this initiative useful. If you couldn’t attend, you can access a recording of the event on your COVID-19 employee portal. Please let us know what you thought about the event by taking a moment to fill out this short survey (one minute). Your input is valuable and helps us improve upon the experience. Speaking of which, keep an eye out next week for details of our next live Q&A!
Update on return to office:
Virtual work has become the norm for many of us not on the frontlines and we are thankful that employees at home have transitioned to this unexpected change. As we begin to hear about other organizations talking about the future of returning to work, or businesses like Shopify announcing they will remain virtual, we have put together a dedicated team to focus on how we will continue work, while we keep physical distancing mandates in place and even beyond that point.
The return to office and virtual work plan will consider how we will safely return to work at our sites as well as how we will continue to support those working virtually. Even as provincial restrictions are loosening, the pandemic is still alive and physical distancing will be required for some time. Physical distancing means we cannot have 100% of employees back 100% of the time.
Safety remains our number one priority and will guide all the decisions made. Our return to office process will go in phases and may vary across locations. The phases will be triggered by requirements across jurisdictions and the readiness of sites to receive employees. That means we won’t have exact timelines until we are able to work through this process and are confident we can proceed safely. Rest assured, employees will be given plenty of notice and individual circumstances will continue to be a consideration.
Stories from our frontline: Robyn Johnson, a technical specialist in Regina, tracks down blood of rare types for patients. When we asked her about what makes her job so unique, she told us “my job is really about solving puzzles. I use my expertise to help find red blood cells for patients with a rare blood type, or who need platelets that are a precise match. I’m also on daily calls where we decide how to move blood products around the country, to ensure we meet the needs of hospitals here in Saskatchewan. I’m very much a puzzle person, and I just love figuring out all the pieces and having it come together perfectly”. Learn more about Robyn’s story on blood.ca/stories.
Question of the day: Are donors who are participating in the convalescent plasma program being encouraged to donate in the future at various time points so we can obtain an idea of how long we can expect neutralizing antibodies to last in a recovered patient's blood stream?
Thanks for the question! Yes — for donors who have a level of antibody that qualifies their donation for the clinical trials, we are asking those donors to come back to give plasma every 7 days.
A couple of our donors have now given twice, and we hope that they’ll keep coming back until their own level of antibody starts to fall. We know that eventually antibody levels will fall, and probably at different rates in different individuals, but the data we acquire with testing the antibody levels in each plasma donation will help to understand that better.
Dr. Dana Devine, chief scientist
About the daily digest
This daily digest will highlight the latest policy and employee support measures, resources to help you manage our new reality and original content like articles and videos to remind us that what we do matters. Things are moving quickly, so you can expect to hear from us daily. No access to email? No problem — all this information and more can be found on blood.ca/employees from any device, no login required.
Click here to read past editions of the daily digest.
Have questions? Check out blood.ca/employees or email us at communications@blood.ca.