Unvaccinated Quebec Doctors Will Have Licenses Suspended By October 15th
Collège des médecins du Québec (College of Physicians) in Quebec, Canada has announced that all healthcare workers, including doctors, will be required to be fully vaccinated if they want to exercise their right to practice their profession. For those who are not fully vaccinated, come October 15th 2021, they will be suspended until they are fully vaccinated. This means unvaccinated doctors will lose their right and license to practice.
The Quebec Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (Ministry of Health & Social Services) will provide the College with the names of physicians who are not yet fully vaccinated. Those who comply with the agencies measures will be offered reinstatement of their right to practice.
As of now, the College claims the physician vaccination rate is at 97%.
Vaccine hesitancy among healthcare professionals is something we've seen a lot during this pandemic, with examples from all over the world. In New York State, there are approximately 70,000 healthcare workers that are not vaccinated, 16% of the total amount of healthcare workers.
Kingston, Ontario's research and teaching hospital has placed 136 employees on a two-week, unpaid leave for failing to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
There also seems to be a risk healthcare staff shortages in parts of Canada as a result of vaccine requirements for employment. The B.C. Nurses’ Union disagrees with vaccine mandates and is concerned that there will be a shortage of healthcare workers as a result. This is why, so far, they’ve refused to implement the policy despite ongoing government pressure.
Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, New York announced that it will stop delivering babies after September 24th due to the fact that too many maternity unit workers have resigned over COVID vaccine mandates.
A survey conducted at Chicago’s Loretto Hospital in January 2021 showed that 40 percent of healthcare workers at that hospital would refuse vaccination. With mandates now, this number likely changed.
50 percent of healthcare workers and hospital staff in Riverside County, which is comprised of approximately 2 million people, were refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine early on in the pandemic.
Eric T. Payne, MD, MPHD, FRCP, Pediatric Neurocritical Care & Epilepsy at Alberta Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics & Neurology at the University of Calgary recently put out a report that may provide more insight around the concerns being raised about mandatory COVID vaccination requirements.
In his letter he writes:
Thank you for allowing me to listen Friday morning during council’s discussion on a vaccine mandate for Alberta physicians. Let me please provide the perspective of a physician who loves his job, cares deeply about his patients, and continues to avoid the mRNA vaccines. I am a pediatric neurologist and researcher specializing in epilepsy and neurocritical care at Alberta Children’s Hospital (ACH). I have a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and before returning to ACH in February 2020, I spent 6 years on staff at Mayo Clinic where I developed expertise in neuroinflammation. Both medical school and pediatric neurology residency were completed here in Calgary. I am also a father of 3 young children and remain very much pro-vaccine. While I refuse to take this novel experimental mRNA therapy, my wife, children, and I are completely vaccinated, including yearly flu shots. This is not a contradictory stance as these current mRNA vaccines represent a dramatic departure from using, for instance, live attenuated viruses. Rather, they represent a completely novel and experimental therapy with no longterm data. Consider that the CDC just updated the definitions of immunity and vaccine on September 1, 2021 - 13 days ago -swapping out the prior “produce immunity” to “provide protection” (1).
All this being said, the vast majority of healthcare workers in Quebec seem to be fully vaccinated, but there remains a healthy minority who still do not feel these vaccines are necessary, proven safe in the long term, nor should be forced upon people.