The Toronto police department has publicly reprimanded 248 city of Toronto employees for not showing proof of a childhood vaccination, the Globe and Mail reports. The staff were either on call for duties at Kingsway Hospital in the suburbs or for routine work at the Toronto District School Board.
It was the first such public reprimand since 2002, when similar rules were put in place, after measles outbreaks in the 1990s. The policy is required under an Ontario law passed in 2018, which imposes strict requirements for vaccinations for people working with children or with contact with the general public.
Although the vaccination requirement only applies to staff with children in Ontario, the New York Times suggested in a 2017 report that staff who work outside of the province would likely face an even more difficult time complying. The Times reported that state Health officials in the state have been cracking down on vaccination loopholes, with a few instances of public health officials reaching out to private companies to advise them to remove workers from the payroll if they are not vaccinated. The report notes that when a mother from Missouri called to complain, the state health official said, “If I was a citizen of Canada I would go tell my government to do the same thing.”
Read the full story at The Globe and Mail.
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