B.C. mayor says province needs to rehire unvaccinated healthcare workers, amid hospital closures

Provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix denied the vaccine mandate caused the shortages, claiming that people are not coming to work when sick.

  • Rebel News
  • April 24, 2023
  • News
B.C. mayor says province needs to rehire unvaccinated healthcare workers, amid hospital closures
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A rural B.C. mayor wants the provincial health authority to rehire unvaccinated healthcare workers amid repeat emergency room closures across the province.

On April 15, Nicola Valley residents protested the tenth closure of its local emergency department since December. 

"This hospital, years ago, was fully functional. All 40 beds were out. We had surgeons, [and] we had babies born here. This is not a magical situation. It's happened before and needs to be returned to that," said Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz.

Provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix denied the vaccine mandate caused the shortages, claiming that people are not coming to work when sick. "The issue on healthcare staffing challenges is COVID-19. It's not the mandate," he said, adding that 99% of full-time healthcare workers were vaccinated.

Protest organizer Georgia Clement accused Interior Health of putting politics before the safety of residents. "People here are in danger. [Interior Health] is making decisions and playing with our lives. They're playing politics with our lives — literally," she said.

Merritt's emergency department closed its doors temporarily, citing a staff shortage. They diverted patients to Kamloops or Kelowna in the event of an emergency — over one hour away.

One of the participants said her father died earlier this year after hospital staff sent him home without medical care.

"The hospital was closed for two hours. They sent him on his way home. The last thing I remember my dad saying was, 'I'm scared.' But he passed away in the night," said Melanie Griffiths.

In January, a group of 37 mayors formed the B.C. Rural Health Care Alliance, vying to solve healthcare shortages in their communities. They participated in a conference call with Dix and raised the issue of terminating unvaccinated nurses as a cause for some scarcity.

Goetz told the Vancouver Sun then that Nicola Valley Hospital suffered from acute staffing shortages that temporarily shut down several times since Christmas 2022, including one day overnight, from Sunday, January 8 at 6:30 p.m. to Monday, January 9 at 7:00 a.m.

A spokesperson for the Health Ministry said the province terminated 2,496 employees "due to non-compliance with the provincial health officer's Hospital and Community COVID-19 Vaccination Status Information and Preventive Measures order."

Approximately half of those workers fired for not getting the COVID jab worked in the Interior and Northern Health regions, where emergency room closures and shortages continue to make headlines.

In 2022, 13 rural hospitals temporarily closed their emergency rooms serving communities under 10,000.

A hospital near Slocan, B.C., in New Denver, shut down multiple times last year and ultimately reduced its operating hours from 8 am to 8 pm. The hospital closed its emergency room on January 20.

Clearwater, B.C., suffered the most from emergency room closures, shutting down 62 times.

As of Spring 2022, 908 staff working for Interior Health (3.84% of the workforce) and 297 employees (3%) from Northern Health received the boot for not getting the COVID jab. A government note clarified that some staff terminated did not hold medical positions. 

From April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, B.C. Interior Health cancelled 224 surgeries due to patient death, with 46% (103 bookings) of them waiting over the benchmark wait time target for surgery at the date of patient death.

During the same period, the Interior Health Authority (IHA) cancelled 1,009 medical imaging bookings citing patient deaths, including 387 CT scans, 196 ultrasounds, and 108 echocardiograms. Nearly one-third (31%) of the 1,009 bookings waited over the priority wait time target.

British Columbia Canada Health & Medical Fight Vaccine Passports news
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