The Hospital for Sick Children will make it mandatory for all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and will not make any allowances for unvaccinated individuals who participate in a regular testing program.

The Ford government had given hospitals until Sept. 7 to establish vaccination policies that would require their employees to either be fully vaccinated or participate in a regular testing program.

But the policy announced by SickKids on Thursday goes beyond that and will instead make vaccination mandatory for all staff, volunteers, learners and contractors who do not have a “documented medical or human rights exemption.”

The hospital says that anyone who isn’t vaccinated will be required to participate in an education course about vaccination. If they continue to choose to remain unvaccinated following that the hospital says that “all options will be considered to effectively enforce the policy,” presumably up to and including termination.

“We are united in our belief that immunization against COVID-19 is an individual and societal responsibility. With these policies, we are adding an important and powerful layer of protection to prevent COVID-19 infections in patients, families and staff,” Dr. Ronald Cohn, President and CEO of SickKids, said in a memo. “Implementing vaccine mandate policies for our staff was not our first choice, nor was it an easy choice to make, but as health-care institutions dedicated to the health of children, we feel it is the right thing to do.”

The SickKids policy is being introduced in coordination with Ontario’s other children’s hospitals - CHEO and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.

The hospitals say that they are instituting the stricter policy “based on a risk assessment that includes the unique vulnerabilities of the institutions’ patient populations,” which include many children under the age of 12 who are not yet eligible to get vaccinated.

In fact, they say that 70 per cent of the patients at all three hospitals are under the age of 12.

News of the policy comes one day after the University Health Network said that it was also considering forcing its nearly 1,000 unvaccinated employees to either get a shot or take a leave of absence.