From NBC, January 19:
About 12,000 unvaccinated drivers won't be allowed to enter the country starting later this month.
A Covid-19 vaccination requirement that will bar unvaccinated drivers of freight trucks coming from Canada to deliver goods across the American border this month may exacerbate supply chain issues for auto parts, experts say.
An estimated 12,000 drivers could be prohibited from entering the United States under the mandate that may take effect Saturday, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance.
The U.S. mandate, announced in October, requires all essential foreign travelers, including truck drivers, who cross U.S. land borders to be fully vaccinated. Essential nonresident travelers had been able to enter the U.S. during the pandemic regardless of their vaccination status, in part so as not to disrupt trade and to give them more time to get vaccinated.
The forthcoming mandate follows one that went into effect in Canada last week that prohibits unvaccinated truckers from crossing into Canada from the U.S.
The mandates come as Covid-19 hospitalization numbers in the U.S. have climbed because of the highly contagious omicron variant, and as supply chain issues persist across the world.
The border restriction will make the automotive supply chain issue worse, said Doug Betts, president of the global automotive division at J.D. Power, a data and analytics company focused on the auto industry. He noted that auto parts come from all over the world and one obstruction in the chain can significantly slow or stop production.
“By the time you map out the supply chain, it’s just a spider web going everywhere,” he said.
“I would be surprised if there are any (U.S.) cars that don’t have at least one Canadian-based part. Canada is a pretty important part of auto manufacturing,” Betts said. “Any part that doesn’t arrive or if there’s something wrong with it, you can’t build it. There’s more points of failure.”....
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And from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, January 18:
Trucker vaccine mandate raises questions about risk posed by unvaccinated drivers
Unvaccinated truck drivers crossing over the border into Canada may pose a risk of transmitting COVID-19 to the general public, say some infectious diseases doctors and at least one public health expert.
But other specialists who spoke to CBC News said they were skeptical about whether the new federal vaccine mandate for truckers is needed — and questioned how much these drivers could contribute overall to the potential spread of the virus.
"A vaccine requirement for a select group of people I don't think is highly likely to make a big, huge difference in the short-to-medium term," said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist and associate professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
She noted that there's "extremely high transmission of COVID-19" on both sides of the border among unvaccinated people.
"Of course, [truck drivers] could be spreaders of COVID, but so could everyone else right now," Saxinger said. "So, it's kind of a relative thing."
As of January 15, a federal mandate requires that Canadian truckers must be vaccinated if they want to avoid quarantine and molecular tests. Unvaccinated American big-riggers will be turned back at the border
Trade associations on both sides of the border have said the restriction would put additional strain on supply chains amid the latest COVID-19 surge and severe worker shortages.
About 10 per cent of the 120,000 Canadian truckers who cross the border may not be able to work those routes because they haven't been vaccinated, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance.
"Do I think an individual group of thousands of people being vaccinated or not will materially affect the shape of the pandemic in the next short while," Saxinger asked. "Not really."
'Doesn't make any sense'Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont., suggested the trucker vaccine mandate is similar to other government policies attempting to protect people from COVID-19 at the border.
"There's kind of this idea that they're keeping COVID out," he said. "That doesn't make any sense. Omicron is not only here it's proven itself to be rapidly expanding all over the world.
"We've accepted the fact that this thing is just a beast when it comes to transmission."...
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