Credit: Unsplash

Canadian police are searching for a man who repeatedly punched a nurse in the face.

Compared to the United States, Canada has been making longer strides towards its goal of vaccination saturation. Currently, about 69.8% of Canada’s population is vaccinated against COVID-19, about 15.6% more than the population of the US. However, while Canada has taken to vaccines more readily, there still appear to be those who are fiercely and, apparently, violently opposed to them.

Earlier this week, a currently unidentified man entered a Brunet Pharmacy in Sherbrooke, Quebec and began shouting at a nurse, accusing her of administering a COVID-19 vaccine to his wife without his approval. Incidentally, nowhere in Canadian law is it stipulated that people require the permission of their spouses to be vaccinated. The man began to attack the nurse, repeatedly punching her in the face until she fell over, before fleeing the scene. The nurse needed to be taken to a local hospital to have her injuries treated.

“Right at the beginning, the suspect was very angry, very aggressive, he asked the nurse why she vaccinated his wife without approval, without his consent,” Sherbrooke Police spokesman Martin Carrier told CNN. “And he punched her right in the face multiple times so the nurse didn’t have the time to defend or explain herself … and she fell to the ground and the suspect left running out of the drugstore.”

The pharmacy has temporarily suspended all vaccinations, and would not confirm when they would resume. The Jean Coutu Group Inc., parent company to Brunet Pharmacy, said that they “fully condemn this act which is unacceptable towards the pharmacy teams who have been providing essential services since the beginning of the pandemic.”

The police don’t have any photos or footage to go on, but they were able to obtain a description of the perpetrator, and are calling on local residents to help track him down.