Jan 11 (Reuters) – Quebec, Canada’s second most populous province, is planning to force adults refusing to get COVID-19 vaccinated pay a “health contribution” in a move likely to spur a debate about individual rights and social responsibility.

Premier Francois Legault told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that the proposal, details of which were still being finalised, would not apply to those who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons.

Unvaccinated people put a financial burden on others and the provincial finance ministry is determining a “significant” amount that unvaccinated residents would be required to pay, Legault said, adding that such an amount would not be less than C$100 ($79.50).

Governments globally have imposed movement restrictions on the unvaccinated and few have levied fines on the elderly, but a sweeping tax on all unvaccinated adults could be a rare and controversial move.

While such a tax could be justified in the context of a health emergency, McGill University medicine and health sciences professor Carolyn Ells said, whether it survives a court challenge would depend on the details.

But Ells expressed surprise that the government was taking such a “dramatic” step now, when options such as further expanding vaccine mandates remain.

Provinces across Canada are tackling an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases that has forced tens of thousands of people into isolation and burdened the healthcare sector.

The highly transmissible Omicron variant has made it difficult for restrictive measures to curb the spread and health experts have stressed the importance of getting double and tripled vaccinated.

Quebec has been one of the worst-hit, regularly recording the highest daily count of coronavirus cases of all provinces and having several thousand healthcare workers off their jobs.

“The vaccine is the key to fight the virus. This is why we’re looking for a health contribution for adults who refuse to be vaccinated for non-medical reasons,” Legault said.

Legault said that even though the province has about 10% unvaccinated people, they account for about 50% of those in intensive care units.

Legault and his CAQ party face a provincial election in October.

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the federal government had secured enough COVID-19 vaccine doses for all eligible Canadians to receive a booster as well as a fourth dose. read more

Last month, Quebec said it had “no choice” but to allow some essential workers to continue working even after testing positive for COVID-19 to prevent staff shortages from impeding its healthcare services. It has also imposed curbs on gathering. read more

($1 = 1.2578 Canadian dollars)

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Argentina is facing a historic heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104°F), making the country for a while the hottest place on the planet, straining power grids and forcing residents to seeking sanctuary in the shade.

With temperatures up around 45°C (113°F) in parts of the South American nation, hundreds of thousands of people were left without electricity when power grids failed in and around populous capital city Buenos Aires.

“I came home and we were without electricity and the house was a furnace,” said Jose Casabal, 42, who whisked his children off to find somewhere to cool down. “So I took them off to their grandmother’s house to swim in the pool.”

The temperatures in Argentina, where dry hot weather driven by the La Nina weather pattern is already hitting crops, meant that for several hours it was the hottest place on earth, taking over from parts of Australia that cooled during its night.

“Even early morning it was very hot, around 31 degrees,” said Gustavo Barrios, 34, from Tigre as he sat in the shadow of some trees. “I do not have air conditioning at home and we were with just the fan blowing hot air. It’s unbearable.”

Local leaders warned residents to stay out of the sun in the hottest part of the day, wear light clothes and stay hydrated.

BARINAS, Venezuela/CARACAS, Jan 11 (Reuters) – A big win for Venezuela’s fractured opposition in a stronghold of the ruling socialist party on Sunday has given it fresh hope that electoral triumphs are within its grasp if it can both unite and mobilize voters.

Sergio Garrido, an opposition leader, scored a surprise win in a rerun of gubernatorial elections in Barinas state – the birthplace of Venezuela’s former socialist leader Hugo Chavez – with a strong 55% showing, defeating former vice president and foreign minister Jorge Arreaza, who managed a distant 41.2%.

The total number of registered voters in Barinas, a state with about a million inhabitants, surged to 311,595 on Sunday from 278,666 in November, an uptick attributed mainly to grass roots organization by the opposition.

The vote marks the first time Venezuela’s ruling Socialist party has yielded power to an opposition candidate in Barinas and is a sign of erosion in its support and rising abstention among its usual electorate, analysts said.

The opposition victory won praise from the United States, which has struggled to get much traction against President Nicolas Maduro since declaring his 2018 re-election to be fraudulent.

“Disqualifications of opposition candidates, media censorship, voter intimidation, & other authoritarian tactics could not subvert the will of Venezuelan voters,” tweeted Brian Nichols, the U.S. State Department’s assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs.

While the result leaves the ruling party in control of most governorships, it represents a symbolic victory for the opposition, which now controls four of the country’s 23 governorships, the same number as in 2017.

To have any chance of replicating Sunday’s victory more widely, the opposition must refocus itself on winning power at the ballot box after years of boycotts, unify its leadership across the country and prepare for an upcoming presidential election in 2024, seen as a way out of Venezuela’s long political impasse, analysts said.

“When a region is upset, it finds a way to channel that discomfort,” said Jhon Magdaleno, a political scientist and director of the local consultancy Polity. “Barinas was an example of rebuilding (by the opposition). Garrido ended up being backed by multiple political parties.”

DISILLUSIONMENT

Many Venezuelans have grown disillusioned with politics amid a long economic recession and hyperinflation in the country, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). At least five million citizens have emigrated because of the crisis.

The opposition’s strategy has experienced ups and downs in recent years. It refused to participate in Venezuela’s 2018 presidential and 2020 parliamentary elections, arguing that a fair vote was impossible because of interference from Maduro.

But in 2021, after U.S. sanctions made no headway in securing Maduro’s ouster, opposition parties opted to roll the dice on the ballot box.

After a weak showing in November regional elections in which the ruling socialists won 19 of 23 states in play, the opposition said it would aim to rebuild, and its leader Juan Guaido on Monday said he would prioritize unity.

“We have to do what we have done well in the past: organize, mobilize and send clear messages to citizens,” Guaido told reporters in Caracas.

The Barinas vote was repeated under Supreme Court orders after it disqualified the initial opposition candidate following an order by the country’s comptroller general saying he was under investigation and was disqualified from running.

“This situation must serve to face the upcoming challenge: to reunify and strengthen the democratic alternative,” Guaido said, adding that the opposition would aim to reach a consensus on whether to seek a recall vote against Maduro.

Speaking after his swearing-in as governor, Garrido said Venezuelans had realized that if Barinas had managed to vote out the socialists: “Why would the rest of the people of Venezuela not be able to?”

The loss of the governorship is also a sign of internal tensions in the ruling party and raises questions about the performance of regional leaders linked to the party, analysts said.

“There are areas that the ‘Chavismo’ has been losing, and the party knows it, so since 2015 it has applied the strategy of staying in power as a minority,” said Félix Seijas, director of the Delphos consultancy.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.