Health Minister Christian Dubé maintains his position: 20,000 healthcare workers still have to get their two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by October 15.
He was questioned Thursday on the possible breakdown of services that could occur if these 20,000 recalcitrant were to be suspended without pay.
According to the minister, who says he remains “very firm” on his goal, it is still possible to vaccinate 20,000 health workers – 10,000 of whom are in direct contact with patients – before the deadline. “I am very firm for October 15, for the 20,000 who are not vaccinated, go get vaccinated,” he said in the press to the National Assembly.
“I can not imagine that a beneficiary attendant is not vaccinated to work in a CHSLD with everything we have experienced,” he added.
The Prime Minister Francois Legault later added. “We don’t have a choice,” he said. Me, if I were a patient in a hospital, I would not allow an unvaccinated nurse to be near me.
“Are there vulnerable patients in Quebec who would undergo dialysis, who would accept that the nurse who deals with the patient not be vaccinated?” I don’t think so.
“That means these people won’t be able to work. This will increase our problem of shortage of nurses, ”the Prime Minister admitted, however.
“What’s the least worst solution?” We think it’s removing people who are not doubly vaccinated, ”he said.
Mr. Dubé asks the leaders of the CISSS and CIUSSS to prepare a “reorganization plan”. He raised the possibility that unvaccinated workers could do administrative tasks from home.
” What I said [aux PDG] : “Don’t talk to me about a break in service, I’m talking about reorganization of service, it’s very different,” he said. I promise that people will not have a breakdown in service. “
If the Liberal Party is in favor of compulsory vaccination, Solidarity Quebec and the Quebec PartyThey call the government’s approach irresponsible.
“Firing 20,000 people in the current state of service breakdowns in the health network is madness. We cannot afford that, ”PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said Thursday.
4000 nurses wanted
Mr. Dubé recalled his government’s intention to attract at least 4,000 nurses into the public network with the help of various financial incentives, which have not yet been announced.
The day before, Mr. Legault had opened the door wide to a new increase in the remuneration of nurses. On Thursday, he tried to lower expectations by saying those incentives would be temporary.
“It is to offer them, for a certain period, a competitive remuneration, even perhaps higher than what there is in the private sector, because we must recover all the nurses that we are able to recover” , he said.
The plan, even temporary, will be “expensive”, he said. “Several hundred million”, continued the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, who assured that Quebec had “definitively the means to do that”.
“The sums are available,” he said in the press. Everything that will be asked of us by the Minister of Health and his team will be given. An announcement is expected in the coming days.
For her part, the liberal leader Dominique Anglade said she favored a “transformation of the quality of life and then of the working conditions of nurses”, which would ensure that they were retained in the public network.
Watch video
Reference-feedproxy.google.com