Canucks: NHL targets non-exempt unvaccinated players to help curb COVID-19

3 years ago  /  The Province Hockey  /  Read Time: 3 minutes 18 seconds

• Ministry of Health could threaten the return of more COVID-19 restrictions as cases spike amid an aggressive fourth wave fuelled by the Delta variant.
• The National Hockey League has even mandated a suspension process for unvaccinated players who don’t comply with coronavirus protocols — excluding exemptions for medical reasons, religious beliefs or the probability that COVID-19 arose through employment or a quarantine as a high-risk close contact.
• Suspension of unvaccinated players, who are not exempt from the protocols, means players won’t be paid until fit to return if a team can conclude through probabilities that there was a failure to be compliant in contracting the virus and any related illness that would keep them from club activities.
• For fully vaccinated players who contract COVID-19, the league’s collective bargaining agreement will deem their absence a hockey-related injury without a financial penalty.
• On the road, the unvaccinated will also be back in a restrictive bubble existence — confined to the hotel and arena with only fully vaccinated family allowed in their room.
• Vaccinated players won’t face those same restrictions.
• “If I was vaccinated player, I wouldn’t want to play with an unvaccinated player?
• It will be the world of the vaccinated and unvaccinated and that’s very clear.” But what about medical exemptions for NHL players.
• “So, there might not even be an NHL player who is exempt for medical reasons.
• Returning to some sense of normalcy on an off day or night on the road — a restaurant meal and team camaraderie amid proper COVID-19 protocols — will get the attention of the unvaccinated.

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