Town of Banff mandates COVID vaccine for municipal employees
The popular tourist destination of Banff, Alberta has mandated COVID vaccines for all town employees, barring a medical or religious exemption. Town officials held a meeting on August 12 with all municipal employees regarding the vaccine requirements, local outlet Rocky Mountain Outlook reported.
“We had a pretty good understanding of who we thought were vaccinated within the organization, so we are only anticipating a very small number of employees that are not vaccinated currently,” Banff's Director of Emergency Management Silvio Adamo said.
“We have been having conversations and providing information … and each director is engaging their own departments in follow-up meetings to field any questions and assist wherever they can,” Adamo added.
With 127 COVID cases active in Banff and Lake Louise, the area of Banff National Park is at the top of cases per capita in Alberta. Adamo, meanwhile, believes that number only tells a fraction of the story.
“With the influx of our service workers coming from out-of-province from British Columbia and Ontario and Quebec and other areas of Canada, if any of those folks test positive we wouldn’t see those numbers sitting on our books,” he said. “We believe that number is much higher than that.”
Adamo, however, added that it's unclear how many of those cases are actually severe, describing the town as operating “slightly blind” in regards to hospitalization admissions and ICU numbers.

