Province slammed for decision to withhold vaccination rates

MPP blasts Ford’s decision to stop publishing immunization numbers in nursing, retirement homes

WATERLOO REGION — Families deserve to know if their loved one is in a facility where folks are vaccinated and what those vaccination rates are.

So says Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife, blasting Premier Doug Ford’s government over a decision to stop publishing COVID-19 immunization rates in nursing and retirement homes.

“This is a government that has just walked back transparency in public health for almost the entire time of this pandemic, which actually undermines trust and compromises compliance,” said Fife, an opposition New Democrat. “It is a bizarre state of affairs.”

Waterloo Region’s public health unit has pulled immunization data for long-term care from its website, saying it no longer has access to numbers by provincial decree.

The Ministry of Long-Term Care said it is “unable to comment on what information the Region of Waterloo previously had available on their website and/or why it was removed.”

On July 1, the ministry directed nursing homes to provide it with the percentage of workers who are vaccinated. But numbers won’t be available until August or later. Those numbers may be shared with public health units, but the province has not pledged to make the data public.

Seven employees who have not been vaccinated were among 41 staff and residents sickened in recent outbreaks that left five elderly residents dead in local nursing and retirement homes.

Like the Progressive Conservative government, Fife resists mandatory vaccination for health-care workers.

“We do need to better understand where the barriers are for folks to get vaccinated,” she said.

“It’s too soon right now to demand any sort of directive around compulsory, mandatory vaccinations.”

She said the public needs to see data to understand why disease outbreaks are happening in long-term care, and to assess the government’s plan to boost immunization.

“The fact that they’re not making the data publicly available is indeed alarming,” she said.

The government says unvaccinated employees in nursing homes must document a medical exemption or attend an education session on vaccines.