Canada's most populated provinces have said they will not force healthcare workers to get Covid vaccines, saying mass layoffs of staff who do not get shots would devastate hospitals.

The decisions by the governments of Ontario and Quebec — the provinces hardest hit by the pandemic — were announced separately.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube told a news conference that the relatively few holdouts — about 14,000 people or three per cent of healthcare workers in the province — could now opt instead to get frequent Covid testing.

“We have tried everything to vaccinate the last three per cent,” said Dube, adding that it was “incomprehensible” to him why some doctors or nurses were still refusing to be immunised.