Vaccinated Ontario health-care workers who are high-risk COVID-19 contacts can still go to work if there is a staffing shortage

In the event of a staffing shortage, fully vaccinated Ontario health-care workers who are high-risk contacts of a COVID-19 case may continue to work in isolation, according to new provincial guidance.

The guidelines, which were released on Dec. 15, say that in most scenarios all high-risk contacts of a COVID-19 case associated with a high-risk setting such as a hospital, congregate living facility or school, must self-isolate for 10 days regardless of their vaccination status.

These individuals must also get a COVID-19 test.

However, the guidelines also say that “if the high-risk contact is a staff member in a health-care or congregate living setting and they are asymptomatic and fully vaccinated, they may work under work-self-isolation.”

This would be encouraged only “if clinical care would be severely compromised without additional staffing,” the document says.

The new directives were made as a response to the highly-transmissible Omicron variant, which is quickly becoming the dominant strain of COVID-19 in Ontario.

In late November, as the province started seeing its first Omicron infections, the government released updated self-isolation rules for the general population. The guidelines instructed anyone who was a close contact of a COVID-19 case involving the Omicron variant to self-isolate, even if they were fully vaccinated.

Previously, an asymptomatic fully vaccinated individual who was a close contact of a COVID-19 case did not have to self-isolate, although they were encouraged to get a COVID-19 test as a precaution.

However, on Tuesday, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health said officials should be “treating every new case going forward as Omicron.”

Dr. Kieran Moore went on to say that certain exceptions would need to be made for health-care workers, as long as they tested negative for COVID-19.

“We are very concerned about a shortage in health human resources in the setting of Omicron given its potential for rapid spread, so we have a strategy to bring workers back that have had been high risk contacts,” Moore said on Tuesday.

“One of the strategies would be to have daily rapid antigen testing for those workers. Clearly if they get symptoms, if they get a PCR test that's positive they would be off but we may need to have a strategy of daily rapid antigen testing for high risk healthcare worker contacts to keep the workforce in place that we need to best serve Ontarians.”

Ontario Hospital Association CEO Anthony Dale has warned that there could be a “major impact” on some clinical services as hospitals that are already short-staffed work to re-activate vaccination programs.

With files from CTV News Toronto’s Ashley Legassic