96% of AHS workers immunized but holdouts remain as COVID-19 vaccine mandate deadline looms

COVID-19 immunization rates are rising among health-care workers in the province as the deadline for Alberta Health Services' vaccine mandate approaches.

And while the vast majority of the AHS workforce is in compliance as the Nov. 30 deadline nears, it appears there are still thousands who are not.

According to AHS, almost 96 per cent of full-time and part-time employees, more than 99 per cent of physicians and 82 per cent of casual employees have now submitted proof of their COVID-19 immunization.

The mandatory vaccination policy applies to all AHS and Covenant Health staff as well as workers at AHS subsidiaries, including Carewest, Capital Care and Alberta Precision Laboratories. Those who don't comply will be put on unpaid leave.

AHS and its subsidiaries have a combined workforce of 121,000 people, according to the health authority's website. Nine thousand physicians are also part of the AHS medical staff.

The immunization deadline was extended by a month, to the end of November, to give staff more time to comply and to provide facilities — particularly continuing care homes with low uptake in rural areas —more time to prepare for the loss of non-compliant staff.

At that time, 94 per cent of full-time and part-time employees, 94 per cent of AHS physicians and 76 per cent of casual workers were fully vaccinated.

Health-care workers, including doctors, nurses, support staff, students and volunteers, were required to submit paperwork proving their vaccination status by Nov. 15, and two weeks must have passed by the end of the month since their second shot.

Danielle Larivee, first vice-president with the United Nurses of Alberta, said her union was updated by AHS on Thursday and told that 97 per cent of its affected members are fully immunized.

"There has been a substantial movement toward more people being immunized, thanks to the delay," she said.

While the situation has improved, she said, there are still some hospitals and continuing care homes that could be hard hit.

"What we're being told is in Edmonton and Calgary they expect to be able to mitigate it quite easily. So it is primarily northern Alberta and central Alberta where there's some of those challenges … and there were already staffing challenges in many of those communities," she said.

According to Larivee, some registered nurses, already exhausted by the pandemic, are worried about the impact of losing staff who refuse to get vaccinated and are put on unpaid leave as a result.

"They want to know the people they're taking care of are going to continue to get services. But also … what it's going to mean to them in terms overtime, in terms of their workload."