(Toronto) The Ontario government will ultimately not impose vaccination on hospital staff, despite advice from its scientific experts and the province’s Hospital Association.
Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday spoke of evidence of shortages elsewhere in Canada, including British Columbia, and said existing policies in Ontario will ensure patient safety without creating a disruption in services.
The same day, in the neighboring province, the Quebec government announced that it was finally giving up on requiring all health care workers to be adequately vaccinated. And in Nova Scotia, the government is extending the November 30 deadline by eight weeks for public sector employees to show proof of full vaccination.
“I am not prepared to jeopardize the provision of care for millions of Ontarians,” Ford said in a written statement on Wednesday. “After reviewing the evidence, our government decided to maintain its flexible approach by leaving human resource decisions to hospitals. ”
Ford also cited the already high vaccination rates in hospitals on Wednesday. He believes that vaccination and strong infection control protocols have so far kept hospitals safe and managed to manage outbreaks.
Contrary opinions
The provincial directive currently requires hospital staff to be vaccinated or regularly tested, but several hospitals have adopted more stringent policies. Establishments that have laid off or on leave of unvaccinated employees have reported staff losses of between one and three percent.
Ford had written to hospital managers and others in the industry last month asking for their views on the matter.
The Ontario Hospital Association supported this mandatory province-wide vaccination – a position it said had been endorsed by 120 of 141 member hospitals. Hospital managers argue that staff shortages due to outbreaks are more difficult to manage than those that would eventually be linked to mandatory vaccination.
Ontario’s COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Table, an expert group advising the government on the pandemic, made the same argument. Unvaccinated hospital workers who contract COVID-19 may be on sick leave for extended periods, experts say. In addition, compulsory vaccination of staff would make hospitals safer for vulnerable patients.
The Ontario Nurses Association, on the other hand, found the current policy of frequent screening tests for unvaccinated workers to be reasonable. There were also concerns about possible staff shortages.
The Ontario government has made vaccination mandatory for workers in long-term care homes, with a deadline of November 15. These homes had experienced a massacre of deaths linked to COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic, as in Quebec.