Covid-19 mandates end for healthcare settings in British Columbia.
During a press conference on Friday, B.C. Public Health Officer Bonnie Henry announced the end to her Covid-19 public health emergency which takes effect immediately and rescinds the Covid-19 shot mandate.
Healthcare workers whom were fired for not getting the Covid-19 shots will not get their jobs back but can now go through the whole hiring process again. They are now allowed the opportunity to re-apply for their positions if still available and other positions that are available.
The ending of the Covid-19 mandates is more accurately labeled as being paused considering Bonnie Henry suggested she would bring the Covid-19 mandates back in a heart beat if she could describe the situation to be scary enough.
“Absolutely,” she insisted. “If we see a major change in the virus that causes more severe illness breakthrough in people who have protection now from vaccines and from previous infections, then yeah, we would need to put in place additional measures again requiring vaccination. We may require updated COVID vaccines if the situation changes. That’s part of the role that we play.”
Remember in the 2021 snap election when John Horgan was the BC NDP leader and Premier of British Columbia. Bonnie Henry didn’t ramp up overreaching mandates until the provincial election votes were cast and Horgan secured a majority government.
The health order previously required everyone working in healthcare settings to be “vaccinated” with the Covid-19 shot. This order didn’t just impact healthcare works, the mandates were also imposed on janitors, security guards, maintenance crews and anyone else that could be found working or volunteering in a hospital or long-term care facility.
While the public health order mandating Covid-19 shots has been “lifted” a new immunization registry will take its place.
The registry will be a digital record immunization status which will collect data of which shots they have received and when or if they have been sick.
Bonnie Henry and Adrian Dix say the registry will be used to track when workers in healthcare settings (all, not just healthcare professionals) are due for “updated” shot.
They also said the registry will be used to punish “unvaccinated” workers if any “outbreaks” are reported by changing their job duties or suspending them from work until further notice.
It wasn’t long ago David Eby suggested he wouldn’t want to “reward” healthcare workers who refused to get the Covid jabs by giving their jobs back.
“It’s, I think, completely bizarre that he would want to get rid of someone who did such amazing work for us during the pandemic and led us through that, and instead reward the people who refused to get vaccinated,” Eby said. “It’s a very different and distinct position from ours.” Eby responded at a news conference on July 12, 2024 to Rustad’s healthcare policy to end the Covid-19 mandates and hire back with compensation the workers that were fired.
As for Covid-19 mandate related terminations. “The total number of people affected (meaning ‘fired’) by the vaccine mandate was 2,692,” he told reporters. “The majority of those were casual workers. Only about 630 were full-time workers. A very small subset of that were doctors and nurses and health sciences professionals.”
Dix also neglects to mention how many healthcare workers were forced to move out of province to find work in their profession or forced into early retirement.
Fired Public Service Employees and healthcare workers that have petitioned the BC government for nearly 2 years to lift the mandates were happy with the news.
The BC Nurses reacted by acknowledging the anouncement of a vaccine registry and said it will monitor the “province-wide vaccine registry for health care workers to ensure our members’ rights are protected and upheld.”
The union also advised how the Covid-19 shot mandates have impacted the quality of healthcare services British Columbians receive due to staffing shortages.
“these nurses are a welcome addition that will help alleviate the critical staff challenges that are currently resulting in delays to patient care.”
Back in December 2022 David Eby claimed during an interview with Global News that the Covid-19 vaccine mandates had no effect on staffing shortages.
The Conservative Party of B.C. and BC United Party both welcomed the ending of the Covid-19 mandates after years of being the only jurisdiction in Canada still imposing them.
The leader of BC United Party said this decision is “long overdue!”
The leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. John Rustad says it’s good news for patients in British Colombia so they can get the care they need.
Both have been calling on the BC NDP for years to end the Covid-19 mandates while pointing to the rest of the world moving forward and B.C. being the only place continuing the mandates.
Green party leader Sonia Furstenau likewise accused the New Democrats of playing politics with vaccinations.
“This announcement is an acknowledgement that they long ago abandoned science and evidence as their driving principles in decision making,” she said.
Bonnie Henry said to end the public health order, the decision was solely her own when reporters asked if the political landscape influenced it.
“To be very clear, it’s my determination when the conditions are met for a public health emergency,” said Henry. “When is the right time (to lift it) has nothing to do with any of the decisions of government or other factors in that sense.”
The next scheduled provincial election is roughly 3 months away in October 2024.
