Quebec College of Physicians calls for stricter measures for the unvaccinated

MONTREAL -

The Quebec College of Physicians is urging the government to "speed up the pace of implementing measures to limit the number of contacts with unvaccinated people."

College president Dr. Mauril Gaudreault affirmed his support for the future obligation of a third dose to hold a vaccine passport, writing in a letter published Friday that its arrival "must be done more quickly and "cover a wide range of businesses and public places."

On Thursday, Minister of Health Christian Dubé announced that proof of vaccination will be necessary to make purchases at the SAQ and the SQDC from Jan. 18. He also warned that he planned to "add non-essential services or businesses, such as personal care" to this list.

The minister's office was keen to point out that the provincial government "announced several very important measures to limit contacts: closing of restaurants and bars, postponement of the start of the school year to Jan. 17, no indoor gatherings except for a few exceptions, curfew."

His federal counterpart, Jean-Yves Duclos, went even further on Friday, designating a potential mandatory vaccination as "the only way out" of the health crisis. However, it is the provinces that can make such a decision.

"The vaccinated population can no longer suffer in silence the constraints of health measures while the unvaccinated occupy one in two acute care beds and the majority of intensive care beds," he said. "The overload of hospitalizations and offloading deprives thousands and thousands of patients of surgery that is constantly postponed, in some cases further deteriorating their health status."

He added that "the INESSS (Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux) projects more than 3,000 hospitalizations in the coming weeks, including 400 in intensive care, and that the network has lost 20,000 of its workers.

The doctor would like to see the vaccination campaign for the third dose accelerated, a wish that could be granted, as about 200 members of the Canadian Armed Forces are being deployed to support the vaccinators.

However, he called on physicians to mobilize to help out in the vaccination centers, as they did in the spring.

BETTER COMMUNICATION

Gaudreault also criticized the provincial government for its lack of clarity in communicating with the public.

"Messages about screening, rapid tests or isolation are currently confusing," he said, stressing "the need for more transparent and consistent communication."

He criticized officials for not announcing all new measures at news conferences, saying that some information is not made public until the next day, through newspapers.

Last week, when the government decided that children and daycare staff would no longer have to isolate themselves from their group if they had been in contact with an infected person, the directive was sent directly to the daycare services, without being announced in the news briefing of the same day. This measure was finally cancelled last Tuesday.

Dubé's office replied that "the government holds several press briefings each week, in addition to technical briefings for journalists. We are transparent with Quebecers," it concluded.

'WORRISOME' MEASURES

The current tightening of measures is "worrisome, because it's always more and more infringing on rights and freedoms," said Catherine Descoteaux, coordinator of the Ligue des droits et libertés, in a telephone interview.

"To a certain extent, it's okay for the government to infringe on rights and freedoms when necessary," she said, "but it's up to the government to demonstrate the necessity of those infringements."

While she does not entirely rule out the possibility of expanding the scope of the vaccine passport, she would like such decisions to be made only after deliberations in the National Assembly, when all MNAs have all the information in hand. There must be some scrutiny from the opposition," she said, "that's how a democracy works."

"When we were in March 2020, it was more understandable" for the government to do this, she said, as there was no time to deliberate. But after two years of the pandemic, "you start to see the hits coming" in advance, she said, recalling that the INESSS had predicted the meteoric rise in cases as early as mid-December.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Jan. 8, 2022.