Former chief medical officer of health says province needs more vaccination incentives

CALGARY -

The province needs to bring in new vaccination incentives to help protect health care and the public at large says one Alberta former top doctor.

Dr. James Talbot said that should include "both positive and negative incentives."

"There's no doubt that that the decisions of the 10 per cent of the adult population who are not vaccinated has had a very significant impact on the healthcare system and on health costs and delays of surgeries,” Dr. Talbot said.

Incentives could include increased health care premiums for unvaccinated people or expanding the types of businesses that require proof of immunization to enter.

He added kids five to 11-year-olds are an important group. Roughly 18,000 are fully vaccinated out of roughly 391,000 in the province. About 40 per cent have their first shot.

While severe illness is uncommon in kids, that is only a small part of the importance of getting them vaccinated - including the possibility of new strains emerging.

"The more you allowed it to circulate more chances increase, you'll get that. So it's a bad strategy, just from the pure science of it," Talbot said.

BUSINESS COMMUNITY CALLS ON PROVINCE TO DO MORE

The business community is also calling on the province to do more. Deborah Yedlin of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce said business can't take another lockdown, but could use some legal support from government.

"They need to look at things such as legislation that supports employer mandates for staff vaccinations and to increase the availability of testing and access to contact tracing," Yedlin said.

Talbot was also critical of the province's policy of largely letting the Delta and Omicron variants rip through the population.

"That's what its strategy has been from August on," said Talbot. "By refusing to put controls in place."

"Since August 1, over 1000 Albertans have died. In the rest of the country about 2500 have died," Talbot said. "So what that means is that if the Alberta government had only done the average of what other provinces were doing, two thirds of Albertans we've lost since then would still be walking around."