Advocates concerned over where unvaccinated nurses will work amid mandates
vaccine mandates for their health-care workers, hundreds of frontline staff are opting to leave their jobs instead of getting the jab.
“Patients do not need the burden of having unvaccinated people working with them, whether they’re nurses, doctors or PSWs or anybody else,” she said.Grinspun’s organization has been advocating for a vaccine mandate for all health-care workers in Ontario since at least the summer and has criticized the current provincial Conservative government for not moving more swiftly on a decision to impose such a mandate given that many other provinces already have.
In B.C.’s Interior Health region, roughly 1,300 health-care staff were put on unpaid leave after not having gotten their shots of the vaccine. “I’m currently still waiting for the signs on this one,” said Andrea Henders in an interview earlier this week. “There isn’t any long-term data on the vaccine yet.”According to Henders, the loss of hundreds of health-care workers in B.C. would most likely take a huge toll on an already strained system.