No question of going door-to-door or multiplying phone calls: Quebec has finally chosen the “outstretched hand strategy” to try to reach the 540,000 Quebecers who are not yet vaccinated.
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As the Prime Minister hinted last week, it is primarily in Montreal that efforts will be concentrated.
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
“We want to go where the vaccination rates are the lowest,” explained Monday the Minister for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, whom François Legault had asked to develop an action plan specifically targeting the unvaccinated.
A first “ephemeral” vaccination clinic will open its doors on Thursday, in the metropolis, at the CLSC Sainte-Catherine.
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
Reinforcement students
Dozens of similar walk-in clinics will soon be set up across Quebec.
A telephone line will also be set up so that those who have not been vaccinated can discuss their hesitation with a health professional.
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To help it “intensify” the means deployed to convince the non-vaccinated to obtain their first dose, the Legault government will in particular call on medical and nursing students.
A partnership in this sense has also been concluded with the University of Montreal, which could mobilize up to 2,000 students, announced Minister Carmant.
Other Quebec universities will eventually be invited to lend a hand.
The students recruited, who will be paid, will be integrated into the current public health teams. Those interested will be able to register by telephone or by means of an email address within the framework of an initiative called “I contribute university”.
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
The vaccination registry makes it possible to know who the 540,000 non-vaccinated people in Quebec are, but the government prefers “to use the outstretched hand strategy”, explained the director general of the executive and operational management of the pandemic, Daniel Paré.
Until March 31
Questioned by journalists, Minister Carmant preferred to refrain from revealing the objective he has set.
“Each dose we get is a gain,” he said.
However, he is giving himself until March 31 to reach as many non-vaccinated people as possible, those among the most marginalized in society and those for whom language represents a barrier to information.
Communication efforts will be made in the different languages of the persons concerned, among others.