Canada to mandate Covid vaccine for government 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.

The federal government is Candida's largest employer and 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 percent of Canada's 38 million population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, while nearly 62 percent were fully vaccinated.

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

© 2021 AFP