In this episode, Dr. Kelly answers a question about whether or not the vaccine passport allows people to visit patients in acute care, restaurants, and other places where they may come in contact with other people with the flu.
00:00:00.000Question was number three, which was aren't allowing vaccinated people to unvaccinated people to restaurants, but they are still allowed to visit patients in acute care.
00:00:15.600The vaccine passport requires people to be vaccinated to do certain discretionary activities, such as go to restaurants, movies, gyms.
00:00:26.120Not because these places are high risk.
00:00:28.160We're not actually seeing public transmission in these settings.
00:00:30.760It's really to create incentive to improve our vaccination coverage.
00:00:35.140But we still allow people to continue with essential things like going to the grocery store, going to the pharmacy, going to visit relatives in acute care, going to access health care services.
00:00:46.520And by the way, when those people come to our acute care, they're going to be screened and they're going to be given a medical mask.
00:00:51.680And we're not seeing transmission from visitors.
00:00:55.780We've seen occasionally visitors to health care facilities have been a source of COVID, but they're actually lower risk than staff because they tend to only visit one person, have contact with their relatives, and then leave.
00:01:08.000Whereas health care workers who may have had COVID and been in the infectious stage unknowingly might have had contact with many more people.
00:01:15.980So visitors are actually low risk to introduce virus into a facility, they're screened, they're putting on a mask, but, you know, and again, most of them are going to be vaccinated.
00:01:25.120But the vaccine passport is for non-essential opportunities, and it's really to create an incentive to get higher vaccination rates.
00:01:34.680And it's really to create an incentive to get higher vaccination rates.
00:01:41.680And it's really to create an incentive to get higher vaccination rates.