B.C.’s provincial health officer has lifted a pandemic-related order around the collection of vaccine status information for healthcare workers, but that doesn’t mean unvaccinated staff will be allowed to return to work.
Dr. Bonnie Henry on Friday repealed an order that required health professional regulatory colleges to obtain vaccination status data about their registrants. The repealed order also allowed regulatory colleges to share vaccination status with post-secondary institutions.
“However, it is noteworthy that the post-secondary institutions have instituted mechanisms to collect information directly from their health sciences students (and for medical residents, trainees and fellows in the case of UBC), making the continuation of those provisions unnecessary,” said Dr. Henry’s office in a statement to Castanet on Monday.
“It is important to note that this repeal does not affect the requirements of healthcare system employers and post-secondary institutions to collect, use and disclose vaccination status information of their employees and students per the PHO orders directed at hospital, community care and residential care service providers.”
Dr. Henry’s office says the order was lifted because regulatory colleges were required to submit a third snapshot of vaccination status data no later than July 14. That information allowed the province to gain a “comprehensive understanding of the vaccination status and its trends” in each healthcare profession.
That has allowed the province to end the current order as it “moves forward with policy work to establish a replacement system.”
The statement to Castanet says the continued collection of vaccine status information by the regulatory colleges is no longer needed to "support the pandemic response.” Each college will determine how to handle the collected vaccine information.
B.C. is currently the only province that has not allowed unvaccinated healthcare workers back onto the job. Some provinces, like Nova Scotia and Ontario, have left it up to individual hospitals and employers to determine their vaccine policies.
