Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has ended the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health workers in British Columbia.
BC was the only province in Canada to maintain the requirement.
Dr. Henry also said she was ending the public health emergency related to COVID-19, which was declared in March 2020. That means all other orders associated with the pandemic have now been rescinded.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said workers who were fired because of the mandate can now apply for jobs.
When asked by NowMedia whether he would make an appeal to those workers to return to the health system, he said: "We need everyone. We encourage everyone who can work in the health care system to work in the health care system."
The province told NowMedia late last year that about 2,500 health workers were fired for failing to comply with the vaccine mandate, which was put in place in October 2021.
A Ministry of Health spokesman said then that the mandate was necessary to "protect the province's most vulnerable and the overall health care system."
Speaking today, Dr. Henry said the vaccine mandate was "no longer necessary," adding that fewer than 200 people were in hospital – 11 of them in intensive care – with COVID-19 in BC.
She said the decision was based on data, but added the order "probably maybe could have been [rescinded] a few months ago" were it not for "uncertainty about whether we were going to see a spring wave."
"While COVID-19 is not gone, we now have high levels of protection in the health care system and in communities throughout BC," she explained.
Dr. Henry said that the Province will now make it mandatory for all health care workers to disclose their immunization status. Immunization can be obtained through vaccination or previous infection, she said.
The requirement to report comes into effect today and applies to health care workers in health-authority-operated and contracted facilities. It includes doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, volunteers and contractors.
The Province added in a press release: "Collecting these records will allow for quick action to be taken in the event of an exposure, outbreak or future pandemic to ensure health-care workers who are not immune follow appropriate measures. Depending on the circumstances, this could include masking, modified duties or exclusion from work."
Earlier this month, Premier David Eby contrasted himself with BC Conservatives Leader John Rustad, who has pledged to rehire and compensate the workers.
Eby said it was “completely bizarre” that Rustad would want to “reward the people who refused to get vaccinated.”
Rustad and BC United Leader Kevin Falcon have long called for the mandate to be dropped, insisting it was unscientific and self-defeating during a health care staffing crisis.
Fired workers have also long campaigned to have the mandate removed.
Attempts by some of those workers to force the order to be lifted through legal action failed earlier this year.
BC Greens Leader Sonia Furstenau, meanwhile, condemned the decision to keep the mandate in place for so long without a "science-based rationale" to justify it.
"Public health is the foundation of our health care system, and that foundation is ineffective without public trust," she said in a news release. "The BC NDP have broken that trust, and the BC United and BC Conservatives have harvested that confusion and fear for political gain."
Today's announcement, she said, "is an acknowledgement that [the BC government] long ago abandoned science and evidence as their driving principles for decision-making."
Dr. Henry, however, emphasized today that the decision to keep the mandate in place was based on science, and could potentially be reintroduced if circumstances worsen.
"The latest epidemiological data I have received shows [sic] the risk posed by the SARS CoV-2 virus is reduced," she said.
"Wastewater indicators and testing data show COVID-19 has levelled off and the number of people in intensive care and in hospitals is lower and stable. The level of protection provided by vaccines and hybrid immunity is also helping to protect us."
She added: "During the pandemic, public-health orders were lifted as the situation changed. These included restrictions on gatherings, mask mandates and other measures aimed at preventing transmission of respiratory illnesses and protecting those most at risk. We are now at the point where I am confident we can continue to manage COVID-19 without the need for the public-health emergency."
Reacting to the announcement today, the BC Nurses' Union said returning nurses would be "a welcome addition" and "will help alleviate the critical staff challenges that are currently resulting in delays to patient care."
In December last year, however, the BC government told NowMedia the vaccine mandate was "not linked to staffing shortages."
Terri Perepolkin, who worked as a lab technologist at Vernon Jubilee Hospital before being fired in 2021, told NowMedia Friday she does not feel "overly excited" about the announcement.
"Offering terminated healthcare workers the ability to 'apply for open postings' isn’t really a huge gift for people who lost their careers for the past 2.5 years," she said. "We will see if there is more discussion about seniority, benefits and compensation."
A class-action lawsuit related to the mandates of which she is a part "will still continue," she added.
"If the mandates can be dropped today, they should have been dropped two years ago – as the science has not changed," she said. "We see the emergency orders being dropped as a political decision, not a medical decision."
