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:

• Government: 2.9 per cent or 307 employees
• School: 4.1 per cent or 792 employees.
•  Regional Health Authorities and Medavie: 3.4 or 734 employees.
• Crown Corporations: 2.5 per cent, or 162 employees. 

"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.

Nursing homes getting ready for further shortage

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."

"On one hand, you've got accommodation for people for various reasons, that they either don't believe in vaccines or don't want to be exposed to them. And on the other hand, you have the risk of death."

He said nursing homes are prepared for the shortage, and have hired casuals and scheduled people for potential overtime work to make up for the loss of employees. He said even though he's confident nursing homes will be staffed, and there won't be any bed closures, there will still be "hardships", because the nursing home workers will be stretched even thinner.

However, Keating said these hardships are worth it if it means residents are protected.

"When you watch people that have been exposed to the virus, watch them die, and know that there's no hope, it really changes your outlook," he said.

"They don't have the defence mechanisms that most of us have to be able to fight this disease. And, you know, the people that love them ... it's just devastating."

He said the province will have teams, including retired nurses and resident attendants, ready to be deployed to certain nursing homes that have staffing difficulties.

Mandate challenged

Four provincial employees have filed a lawsuit against the province, challenging the mandate and alleging it contravenes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The lawsuit is filed by Stuart Murray, a teacher in the Anglophone East School District, Trista Michaud-Hachey, a teacher in the Anglophone West School District, Tabatha Belding, a Registered Nurse with Horizon Health, and Lisa Gorham, an executive assistant with Horizon Health. 

No date has been set to hear arguments, so the Court of Queen's Bench is not releasing the statement of claim. However, a group called Stand 4 Freedom NB posted the claim online.

The claim alleges the mandate infringes on the right to liberty and security of the person as well as the reasonable expectation of privacy.

The lawsuit asks for a declaration that the vaccine mandate is not justified, and that the applicants and any employees put on leave without pay, disciplined or terminated because of the policy should be reinstated with pay in lieu.

Department of justice and public safety spokesperson Geoffrey Downey sent a one-line response to a request for comment.

"The government is confident its defence of this case will be successful, but cannot otherwise comment on it," he said.