So-called vaccine passports like the ones the French government is requiring to go to restaurants, sporting events, or movie theatres don't appear to be coming to London or Ontario anytime soon.
At a virtual media briefing on Monday, local Associate Medical Officer of Health Dr. Alex Summers was asked about an increase of appointment bookings in France once the new rules were announced.
"The decision around making vaccination mandatory for certain activities is a very live conversation," Summers said. "We want to be able to follow through a number of different steps before we would make things mandatory if that's required to get the vaccination rate high enough that we can safely return to the in-person activities that we want to return to."
In France, more than 926,000 vaccine appointments were booked the Monday after the new rules were announced - an all-time record. Roughly 350,000 were booked the following morning - totalling 1.4-million appointments in 14 hours, according to Doctolib.
Summers said dispelling myths and giving people the opportunity to get vaccinated will happen before any sort of mandatory rules come in.
"Once those steps have all been followed, then we can start talking about whether mandatory vaccination to participate in certain events will be helpful," Summers said. "We certainly know, that mandatory vaccination policies help to move the needle, the question is how far we need to move that needle once we've exhausted everything else."
As of July 10, only 65.4% of people in Middlesex-London aged 30-34 had received their first dose of the vaccine - by far the lowest number among all age groups. Just over 78% of adults in the county have had one dose, while 48.9% have had two.
"We saw a spike (in France), I have no doubt that would happen here," he added. "But let's see if we can explore some of those other ways to reduce barriers first, and then, in discussion with all other decision makers at each level of government, we can start to explore whether or not that would be necessary."
An order like this one would likely come from the province. Premier Doug Ford said last week Ontario was "not gonna have a split society" when asked about the possibility.
It was also announced Monday that anyone aged 12 and over will no longer need to make an appointment to get a vaccine. The health unit said it will offer walk-in vaccine appointments to anyone 12 and older at its mass vaccination clinics as of Tuesday, July 20. The hours for the walk-in appointments will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Starting Tuesday, July 20, changes are coming to #MLHU’s COVID-19 vaccination clinics. Please share and tell a friend. ⬇️ #LdnOnt #Middlesex /1
— MLHealthUnit (@MLHealthUnit) July 19, 2021
