The College of Physicians of Quebec urges the government to “step up the pace to put in place measures to limit the number of contacts with unvaccinated people.”
The President of the College, the Dr Mauril Gaudreault, affirmed his support for the future obligation of third dose to hold a vaccine passport, writing, in a letter published Friday, that his arrival “must be done more quickly and cover a vast set of shops and public places”.
Already on Thursday, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, announced that proof of vaccination would be necessary to make purchases at the SAQ and SQDC from January 18. He then warned that he planned to “add non-essential services or businesses, such as personal care” to this list.
Reached by email, the minister’s office recalled that the provincial government “announced several very important measures to limit contact: closure of restaurants and bars, postponement of the start of the school year face-to-face to January 17, no gathering in inside with a few exceptions, curfew ”.
His federal counterpart, Jean-Yves Duclos, went even further on Friday, designating a potential compulsory vaccination as “the only way out” of the health crisis. However, it is the provinces that can make such a decision.
“The vaccinated population can no longer suffer in silence from the constraints of health measures while unvaccinated people occupy one in two beds in short term and the majority of beds in intensive care”, pleaded Doctor Gaudreault. For him, it is a question of fairness to those who have gone for their injections.
During this time, “the overload of hospitalizations and the load shedding deprive thousands and thousands of patients of an endlessly postponed surgical intervention, further deteriorating in some cases their state of health,” he said, recalling that ” INESSS is planning more than 3,000 hospitalizations in the coming weeks, including 400 in intensive care, and that the network has lost 20,000 of its workers ”.
The doctor would like to see the third-dose vaccination campaign accelerate, a wish that may be granted, as approximately 200 members of the Canadian Armed Forces are in the process of being deployed in support of the vaccinators.
He nevertheless called on the doctors to mobilize themselves to lend a hand in the vaccination centers, as they had done in the spring.
Better communication
The Dr Gaudreault also turned his criticism towards the provincial government, which he said lacks clarity in its communications to the population. “Messages about screening, rapid testing or isolation are currently confusing,” he argued, stressing “the need for more transparent and consistent communication”.
He criticized officials for not announcing all the new measures during press conferences, denouncing the fact that some information is not made public until the next day, through the newspapers.
Last week, when the government decided that children and child care workers would no longer have to isolate themselves from their group if they had come into contact with an infected person, the directive was sent directly to child care services. , without having been announced in the press briefing the same day. This measure was finally canceled last Tuesday.
Minister Dubé’s office replied that “the government holds several press briefings each week, in addition to technical briefings for journalists. We are transparent to Quebeckers, ”he concluded.
A “worrying” hardening
The current tightening of measures is “worrying, because it always harms rights and freedoms more and more,” said the coordinator of the League of Rights and Freedoms, Catherine Descoteaux, in a telephone interview.
“To a certain extent, it is correct that the government infringes on rights and freedoms when necessary, she qualified, but it is up to him to demonstrate the need for these infringements. “
Although she does not entirely rule out the possibility of widening the scope of the vaccination passport, she wants such decisions to be taken only after deliberation in the National Assembly, when the deputies have all the information in hand. “There still has to be a certain look that can be given from the opposition,” she argued, “that’s how a democracy works. “
“When we were in March 2020, it was more understandable” for the government to act in this way, according to her, as it did not have time to deliberate. But after two years of the pandemic, “we are starting to see the blows coming” in advance, she said, recalling that INESSS had predicted the meteoric rise in cases from mid-December.