A growing number of health-care workers in Nova Scotia are not getting their annual flu shots, according to figures released by their employer, Nova Scotia Health.
In response to a request by CBC News, authority spokesperson Jennifer Lewandowski wrote: “As of December 14, 2023, 7,231 (22.5%) employees have had the flu vaccine during the 2023-24 flu season.”
That’s the lowest flu vaccination rate in at least a decade, according to statistics posted on the Nova Scotia Department of Health’s webpage. Vaccination rates range from 45.1 per cent during the 2015-16 flu season to 29.8 per cent last year.
Although Nova Scotia Health tracks employee vaccination rates, Lewandowski said some health-care workers may have gotten their shots on their own, at pharmacies and clinics, without informing their employer. There’s no obligation to report.
Strang concerned
Despite that, the drop in the vaccination rate worries Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Robert Strang.
“We’re nowhere near where we really need to be in vaccine uptake,” Strang said Thursday.
“Nova Scotia is not alone in terms of what I would call [the] underuse of influenza vaccine by health-care workers. It’s an issue across the country and beyond.
“But I personally [am] still mystified that health-care workers, many of whom are well educated on influenza and see the impacts of influenza, still decline to get the protection from the vaccine.”
Janet Hazelton, the president of the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union, called the decline disappointing but understandable.
“I think it’s very important for health-care workers, for everyone, to get the flu shot, but especially for health-care workers because they’re around vulnerable people,” said Hazelton.
“But I also understand that health-care workers are just fatigued. They’ve been through a rough couple of years.”
Robert Huish is an associate professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University. (Steve Lawrence/CBC)
Robert Huish, an associate professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University, was also surprised by this year’s 22.5 per cent vaccination rate.
“For only one in five health workers, that’s a new low,” said Huish who is writing two books on COVID 19 and the response by governments to the pandemic, including the use of vaccines.
“Physicians are usually at the highest rate of those who go for flu shots or vaccines, whereas nurses [are] lower. And then health aides and even paramedics are the least likely to participate in that.”
Mandatory vaccinations considered
In 2019, Strang suggested mandatory vaccinations might be needed in response to a 41 per cent flu vaccination rate for health-care workers classified as acute-care staff.
Given the province’s experience with the COVID-19 vaccination program, and the ongoing controversy over vaccines, the province’s top public health official is no longer convinced that’s the answer.
“That mandatory policy was very justified in an acute pandemic,” said Strang. “It’s harder to justify those mandatory approaches in a non-pandemic time. But we certainly need to look at all ways that we could use to get more health-care workers and the general population vaccinated.”
Both Hazelton and Huish think the same way.
“I think in order to make something mandatory there has to be a health crisis like COVID, and even that met with a fair bit of resistance,” said Hazelton. “I don’t think the flu shot is something that we should mandate.”
Huish said “there’s a bit of saltiness still in the air for some health workers after the COVID-19 pandemic, where their employers said you must be vaccinated or you can pack your bags and leave.”
“And a lot of nurses,” he said, “a lot of paramedics [and] other people who work in the health system as well, chose to say no.”
All three agree that educating people and making the vaccine readily available will convince more health workers to get their flu shots.
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the “morning after” pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.
Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills, or “morning after” pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
The proposal comes days before Election Day, as Vice President Kamala Harris affixes her presidential campaign to a promise of expanding women’s health care access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undo nationwide abortion rights two years ago. Harris has sought to craft a distinct contrast from her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who appointed some of the judges who issued that ruling.
“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”
The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B.”
Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.
If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.
Federal mandates for private health insurance to cover contraceptive care were first introduced with the Affordable Care Act, which required plans to pick up the cost of FDA-approved birth control that had been prescribed by a doctor as a preventative service.
The proposed rule would not impact those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poorest Americans. States are largely left to design their own rules around Medicaid coverage for contraception, and few cover over-the-counter methods like Plan B or condoms.
