Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran
Image Credit: Submitted/City of Kelowna
April 06, 2021 - 4:30 PM
Kelowna's mayor has received a COVID-19 vaccination because he volunteers weekly at a coffee shop in Kelowna General Hospital.
Mayor Colin Basran volunteers at the Perking Lot Coffee Shop at the hospital on Thursday mornings and that qualified him for an early COVID-19 vaccine because he’s in direct contact with hospital patients.
Basran called up the KGH Foundation about a year ago and asked if he could volunteer, foundation CEO Doug Rankmore told iNFOnews.ca.
“He’s there once a week, reliably and faithfully,” Rankmore said. “He does everything in the coffee shop – makes the coffee, delivers the coffee, runs the till.”
The mayor works four hour shifts but people can’t just walk in off the street to see him since there is a screening processes in place.
For two or three years Basran hosted an annual golf tournament that raised $100,000 for the foundation. Now, he’s contributing through the sale of coffee at the hospital.
He is one of about 450 volunteers who put in four hours a week for the foundation. Most of them qualified to get COVID-19 vaccinations during Phase 2 of the province’s vaccination program.
Other front line workers, like teachers and first responders were supposed to start getting vaccines this week as part of Phase 3 of the program but concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine has delayed that phase.
The foundation volunteers qualified earlier, along with front line health care workers, because they are in direct contact with patients.
Rankmore couldn’t say if all the foundation’s volunteers were vaccinated since some only put time in at its Rutland thrift shop so they would not qualify.
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