Arabnews24.ca:Friday 7 January 2022 12:53 PM: Provinces are likely to introduce mandatory vaccination policies in the coming months to deal with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said today.
"What we see now is that our health care system in Canada is fragile, our people are tired, and the only way that we know to get through COVID-19, this variant and any future variant, is through vaccination," Duclos said.
Duclos said said that while rapid tests, masking and social distancing are useful tools, they won't end the pandemic on their own.
"Fifty per cent of hospitalizations now, in Quebec, are due to people not having been vaccinated," he said. "That's a burden on health care workers, a burden on society which is very difficult to bear and for many people difficult to understand.
"That's why I'm signaling this is a conversation which I believe provinces and territories, in support with the federal government, will want to have over the next weeks and months."
Duclos said that while discussions about mandatory vaccination policies are not taking place now, he believes that, based on his "personal understanding of what we see internationally and domestically and in my conversations [with] health ministers over the last few weeks," that discussion will start in the coming weeks or months.
He stressed that it's up to the provinces to decide whether to implement mandatory vaccination policies.
More to come ...
