Healthcare Workers In Quebec Want COVID-19 Booster Vaccines – Montreal | The Canadian News

Quebec health workers want to know why they are not allowed to receive COVID-19 booster shots.

For weeks, the province has been offering third doses to certain population groups, including those with weakened immune systems and people with two doses of the Janssen (Johnson and Johnson), AstraZeneca or Covishield vaccines.

Those who work on the front line with COVID-19 patients, however, have not been included.

“It is mysterious because it is clearly recognized around the world that it takes at least three doses to maintain the current level of vaccine efficacy against current and emerging variants,” said Dr. Don Vinh, infectious diseases specialist at the Center for McGill University Health (MUHC), Global News said.

Nathan Freedland, an emergency room nurse at Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe Claire, said medical staff never know what they will face.

“A few weeks ago I tested a man who was coughing up blood,” he said. “He had traveled and was a young man. He stated that he was vaccinated with a single dose. “

He said he suspected the patient might have had COVID-19.

“I listened to his chest with my stethoscope,” he said. “I don’t know what I could have learned from this man.”

Other provinces are giving healthcare workers a third chance.

On December 3, Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization said that booster doses are important for several groups, including people over the age of 50 and all front-line healthcare workers who have direct face-to-face contact with patients. patients.

Quebec Health Minister Christan Dubé also said they would analyze all the recommendations and decide in the next few days what to do.

However, Vinh noted that even if the ministry decides to offer them booster injections now, it would take weeks to complete.

“There are many health workers throughout the province,” he said. “That means they would have to open sites, they would have to get vaccine supplies for those sites, they would have to make appointments.”

Now he and others are waiting to know what the government decides to do.