Employees no longer required to have two COVID-19 vaccine doses in health care, long-term care, education or child care

As of Monday, employees no longer have to be fully vaccinated to work in healthcare, long-term care, education or child care.

Ontario is dropping its COVID-19 vaccine mandate today in those sectors.

Long-term care advocate Dr. Vivian Stamatopolous says she thinks the COVID-19 vaccine should be made mandatory for people in the sector.

“I think we should be having these masking protocols not just in the foreseeable future, but even going forward when we look at flu season and making sure that we are not only re-introducing masking protocols during these known times of added risk, but furthermore, mandating vaccines for this workforce because we know we should have a certain level of safety for these residents who are very vulnerable to start with,” said Stamatopolous.

Until now, most provincial workers in education were mandated to either show proof of two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine, or use government provided rapid antigen tests several times a week.

In long-term care, employees had to have two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in order to stay on the job. Today is also the deadline for workers to prove they have a booster shot.

Long-term care homes struggled to maintain staffing levels throughout the pandemic after hundreds of workers either became sick or had to isolate at the beginning of 2022 during the wave of the Omicron variant.

The province says it will continue providing rapid antigen tests and expanding who is eligible for a PCR test.

Mask mandates will also lift for most public settings next week, but hospitals and long-term care homes will keep the mandates until the end of April.

Employers can choose to have their own vaccine and masking policies.