AHS Is Being Forced To Reverse Course After Vaccine Mandate on Healthcare Workers Backfires

Written By Wyatt Claypool, Posted on December 6, 2021

In theory, the mission of Alberta Health Services should be to improve the health and wellbeing of Albertans, but over the past year, AHS has been trying to redefine its role as simply a vaccination accounting firm.

Positive and negative healthcare outcomes don’t really matter to AHS, and its CEO Dr. Verna Yiu, just getting the overall vaccination rate up is the way healthcare quality is being measured, although this approach rightfully came back to bite them recently. 

Despite AHS touting a 96 percent current vaccination rate among healthcare workers, they are experiencing shortages of staff at various facilities. One would assume that with 96 percent of healthcare employees vaccinated there would be no shortages, but the problem with the 96 percent figure is that it leaves out casual employees who make up 25 percent of all Alberta healthcare workers.

AHS is now having to allow healthcare workers to go unvaccinated and keep working in Alberta healthcare facilities as long as they take a rapid test before going to work.

During a November 30 press conference, Dr. Yiu stated that:

I want to be clear, the testing option is temporary and will be limited in scope. Only clinical work locations deemed to be at significant risk of service disruptions due to staffing shortages resulting from unvaccinated staff will be part of the testing program.

This is clearly just an attempt to not admit a major mistake was made by alluding to the vaccine mandate only causing temporary staffing shortages when AHS officials have been claiming staffing shortages have been hurting their ability to operate more ICU beds for several months now.

Bringing back some unvaccinated workers only goes to show how foolish and hypocritical the mandate was from the beginning. Somehow 260 unvaccinated workers are now needed when supposedly they would be putting patients at risk if they were still working without being vaccinated.

So what change? Well, nothing actually did, the government just wants to have its cake and eat it too. 

It is likely the AHS will fully back off of its vaccine mandates in the coming months. Legally it is highly dubious to admit unvaccinated workers do not pose a risk to patients by allowing them to come back if they get tested while preventing thousands of other unvaccinated healthcare employees from coming back to work. 

On top of potential lawsuits, the AHS could face arbitrarily discrimination against unvaccinated healthcare workers, the general public also won’t put up with a healthcare system that is constantly short staffed simply because some nurses or doctors chose not to be vaccinated.

At the end of the day, people want a healthcare system that is focused on positive healthcare outcomes and not just vaccination rates and passport rules. AHS is either going to have to get with the program and stop restricting the pool of doctors or risk destroying Albertans’ confidence in public healthcare. 

Wyatt Claypool

Wyatt is a student at Mount Royal University, where he is the president of its Campus Conservative club. In his writing, he focuses on covering provincial and federal politics, firearms regulation, and the energy sector. Wyatt has also previously written for The Post Millennial.

14 responses to “AHS Is Being Forced To Reverse Course After Vaccine Mandate on Healthcare Workers Backfires”

  1. Donna Arnold says:

    Every province is the same,,,governments actions are despicable

  2. bibi says:

    petty,incompetent voodoo drs.(Yiu,Hinshaw and the rest of NDP hold overs) plus a gutless kenny and his ilk of clowns and idiots

  3. Monica says:

    To late, AHS has been playing games for years. Well the patients suffer and the higher up get fatter bank accounts.

  4. Mia says:

    I will never forgive the health care professionals, EVER. They had the chance to bring this farce to its knees a year ago when we realized what Covid is, and the utter failure of government overreach with masks, mandates and ultimately forced vaccinations. I took a flu vaccine once, and I was never so sick in my life! Out for five weeks bed ridden. Never for me again will I take a flu vaccine, and especially one that won’t disclose its ingredients!
    This is war, and people better stand up and fight now, people are getting hurt from this vaccine and now it’s our children they are after. I have a huge problem with that, inject yourself with whatever you want, demand I inject myself 🖕you, go after the children, we’ll, now I have to fight you on this BS! That is the hill I’m willing to die on.

  5. T says:

    AHS has a CEO. Think about that for a moment. Don’t forget first and foremost; AHS is a business.

  6. Lynn Harrington says:

    The stress these workers have endured over this has been horrible. If they want to force the unvaxxed to be tested before going to work they also need to test the vaxxed because they can contract and spread this virus. I am absolutely sick and tired of the idiotic mainstream media pretending that the shots prevent covid. They don’t.

  7. CR says:

    Can you say ‘Discrimination’ only testing where needed? Can you say ‘Hypocrisy’ is this a pandemic or not…. NOT. Can you say ‘Illegal’ as this whole scam is illegal on every decision they’re trying to enforce.

  8. KJ Driedger says:

    Just as easily fired again when things look good. As for two months advance payment.

  9. Kenneth Flecknell says:

    The insane idea that any vaccine, that does not stop the person inoculated from getting the virus or from passing it along. All it does is make trillionaires out of big pharma companies and the likes of Fauci and Bill Gates etc pocket books get larger. As for Fauci, he should be indicted for making Doctors conform to his idea of best practice in prescribing medications, where that should be left up to the Doctors. Many have died who would have otherwise been saved by such things as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. Fauci is a mass murderer as far as I am concerned. Those in the hospitals who are sanctioning Doctors who speak out after knowing the the true science of masking and the injections are equally as complicit in these deaths.

  10. Clare says:

    Sure. Make them get tested. The tests are 95-97% inaccurate. 😂

  11. Francois Dubois says:

    Our confidence in AHS is already gone, has been for decades! You get treated better at a veterinary clinic that you do at SOME hospitals. Many staff are putting in tremendous efforts but when you have to fight such a large system hell bent on providing unacceptable healthcare you eventually give up. . . I did after 16 years.

  12. Merkus Raymond says:

    Did you know Dr Yui makes over 700,000 per year?
    Totally criminal…..

  13. Andrew Macpherson says:

    A good reversal of a very narrow minded mandate. Reinstatement of workers isn’t good enough if this leadership continues as it is. Heads should roll and the leadership needs to be changed. These mandates have violated our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that cannot be overlooked or you are asking abused workers to come back into a family that abused them. This is the same for all unions that failed to protect their people from this abuse. Let’s not be allowing leadership to hide from the consequences of their failure.

  14. Colin Barteaux says:

    These workers will be tossed to the curb again as soon as flu season is over…..and I hope they don’t return under these circumstances! 1/2 the vaccinated workers around them are probably highly likely to get Omicron, seeing as a recent study shows vaccination (90+ days out) actually INCREASES chances of contracting Omicold. If they must test, then so should the barely protected vaxxers!