Nursing homes prepare for shortage as 200 workers miss vaccine deadline

Friday is the deadline for all provincial employees to be fully vaccinated or face unpaid leave, and the province is sticking by the plan.

"I think people were waiting for us to change our minds and we have not changed our mind," Health Minister Dorothy Shephard said this week.

The government says long-term care workers, staff and volunteers in schools and licensed early learning and child-care centres, and other government employees who have not been fully vaccinated will be on unpaid leave starting Nov. 19.

On Thursday, Premier Blaine Higgs added one caveat, allowing people who have had their first dose and have booked a second dose to keep working after Friday.

"There's been some recognition that if someone has the ... ability or shown the ability to get their first vaccine then we would believe that they would indeed when the time is right to get their second vaccine," Higgs said.

As of Thursday, just over three per cent of all workers have not been vaccinated, a total of 1,995. Premier Blaine Higgs said Thursday there will be "very, very few exceptions" to the mandate. He provided a list of the different percentages of unvaccinated workers per sector:

"I am pleased to say we have seen enormous improvements in employee vaccination," he said. Before the mandate was announced, the rate of unvaccinated public sector workers was 10 per cent.

"Someone should not have to come to a public hospital in New Brunswick and feel a health threat to come there," he said.

Higgs said people on unpaid leave will lose their benefits including paid sick leave, so anyone on sick leave who hasn't been vaccinated will also be considered on unpaid leave.

The New Brunswick Council of Nursing Home Unions previously said it's concerned about staffing shortages if not enough workers get vaccinated.

Michael Keating, the executive director of the New Brunswick Association of Nursing Homes, said of the total of 7,000 long-term care workers, 2.5 per cent are not vaccinated and would not be allowed to work. That would account for about 200 workers.

"It's still a significant number," he said. "But if you divide that through all of the nursing homes, it should not have a very profound effect on any home."

Keating said the association board had already cemented the Nov. 19 deadline and would have stuck to it even if the province delayed it.

"We lost well over 20 lives," he said. "The chances of people dying are so heightened ... that our board made the decision that we could not in good conscience expose residents to COVID-19 any more than they could under the secure set of circumstances."