Canada to mandate Covid jabs for govt workers

The Canadian government announced Friday that it will require all federal workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19, amid a surge in virus cases due to the Delta variant.

“We know that vaccines are the best way to end this pandemic,” said Dominic LeBlanc, a government minister in charge of Canada’s federal bureaucracy.

“We expect federal public servants to want to comply with this mandatory requirement,” he added.

A deadline for inoculations for some 300,000 public servants will be announced in the coming weeks.

LeBlanc said the vaccine mandate is “aimed at helping Canada reach a minimum level of coverage needed to fully reopen the economy, and keep it open as well as to protect thousands of workers”.

As of Friday, 71% of Canada’s 38 million population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, while nearly 62% were fully vaccinated.

The announcement comes less than a month before the reopening of Canada’s borders to vaccinated foreign travellers, scheduled for Sept 7, a year and a half after their closure due to the pandemic.