Quebec Premier François Legault opened the door Monday to additional suspending a Nov. 15 deadline for well being staff to be totally vaccinated.
In a sequence of radio interviews, Legault mentioned workers shortages might necessitate pushing aside the deadline once more after an preliminary Oct. 15 date was pushed again by a month for a similar cause.
The province had mentioned staff not totally vaccinated by the October date would face suspension with out pay, however Well being Minister Christian Dubé backed down a number of days earlier than the deadline. He mentioned the well being system was dealing with the lack of about unvaccinated 22,000 staff, which might have put an excessive amount of pressure on an already taxed system.
Learn extra:
Quebec choice to delay necessary vaccination signal of robust choices for provinces
The most recent replace suggests 19,634 staff within the well being sector are nonetheless not totally vaccinated and 13,714 haven’t obtained a primary dose.
Legault informed Montreal’s 98.5 FM that obligatory vaccination might be imposed in sure fields fairly than throughout your entire community.
“We’ll absolutely be capable to apply it in sure locations,” Legault mentioned. “In emergency rooms, in fact, it should be utilized as a result of there may be very shut contact with sufferers. There are areas the place we will apply it.”
Legault famous that solely three per cent of nurses are unvaccinated however added that they’re all wanted, as a result of the system is already brief 4,000 nurses.
Learn extra:
Quebec justified in increasing vaccine passport to hospital visits, consultants say
On QUB radio, Legault mentioned a lot is driving on the province’s recruitment plan to deliver nurses again to the general public system full time. The province is providing bonuses of as much as $18,000 to deliver as many as 4,000 nurses again to the community within the coming months.
In numbers launched final week, Dubé mentioned 1,756 folks had accepted the provide, together with 58 nurses popping out of retirement. Of the remaining, 351 had been shifting from personal companies and 1,347 had been part-time staff who switched to full time.
Learn extra:
Quebec recruits 1,000 nurses to work full time amid pressing labour scarcity
In the meantime, Quebec reported 324 new COVID-19 instances on Monday and 5 extra deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus. After six consecutive days of declining hospitalizations, the Well being Division reported a rise in hospitalizations by 9 sufferers to 259. There have been 69 sufferers in intensive care, a rise of 4.
The province administered 4,178 vaccine doses on Sunday, together with 1,389 first doses. The province’s public well being institute mentioned 90.5 per cent of Quebecers aged 12 and older have obtained a minimum of one dose of a vaccine, whereas 87.6 per cent are thought-about adequately vaccinated.
There have been 4,067 energetic COVID-19 instances within the province.
View hyperlink »
© 2021 The Canadian Press
