Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction Nicholas Simons has written to DABC to address vaccine passport exemptions for people who are medically unable to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

He responded: “Medical reasons that someone cannot receive a COVID-19 vaccine are limited to very few individuals. There will be an exemption process for those extremely rare circumstances, involving a person’s doctor and the Office of the Provincial Health Officer. These instances will be extremely rare.”

We’ve responded to request further information from the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction and the Ministry of Health about what the medical exemption process would look like, specifically how affected individuals can liaise with their doctors to ask for this exemption from the Office of the Provincial Health Officer.

On September 7, 2021, DABC sent letters to the leaders of the Conservative, Green, Liberal, and New Democratic parties of Canada to seek their party’s platform response on the Canada Disability Benefit.

We have received one response from the NDP, which you can read here: https://disabilityalliancebc.therightfitbc.org/ndp-response-disability-alliance-bc/.

We will post an update if we receive any further responses.

Since DABC issued our statement about the Vaccine Passport (please read our statement here: https://disabilityalliancebc.therightfitbc.org/dabcs-statement-on-the-bc-governments-lack-of-medical-exemptions-to-the-covid-19-vaccine-passport/) , we have participated in a series of media interviews to raise awareness about this issue. Despite all of this media awareness, we have not heard from the Ministry of Health or the BC Government regarding any changes to their initial decision to provide no medical exemption to the Vaccine Passport.

We have recently received a request by a news outlet to connect them with individuals who have tried to get vaccinated but cannot due to their medical condition. Let’s continue momentum on this issue by raising up the voices directly affected!

If you are a person who has tried to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but could not get approval from your doctor to do so, please reach out to us at advocacy@disabilityalliancebc.therightfitbc.org. Similarly, if you received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, had an allergic reaction, and then were advised by your doctor not to take the second shot, we also want to hear from you!