He hits a nurse for vaccinating his wife against covid-19

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(CNN) -

Police are searching for a man in Canada who they say struck a nurse in the face multiple times, knocking her to the ground after he administered a COVID-19 vaccine to his wife without her permission.

On Monday around 9:15 a.m., a man walked into a Brunet pharmacy in Sherbrooke, a city in southern Quebec, and accused a nurse in her 40s, who the police have not named, of vaccinating his wife, Sherbrooke police spokesman Martin Carrier told CNN.

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"Right at the beginning, the suspect was very angry, very aggressive, he asked the nurse why he vaccinated his wife without her approval, without her consent," Carrier said.

"And he hit her in the face several times so the nurse didn't have time to defend herself or explain herself ... and she fell to the ground and the suspect ran out of the pharmacy."

There are no laws in Canada that say that people need their spouses' permission to get vaccinated, and it is unclear whether his wife had consented.

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The nurse was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital where she was treated for the "multiple wounds to her face," he said.

As a result of the incident, the pharmacy told CNN partner CBC that they suspended the administration of vaccines.

CNN reached out to the pharmacy, but declined to comment on whether vaccines were being administered Thursday.

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Brunet Pharmacy's parent company, The Jean Coutu Group Inc., also declined to comment, but told CNN that they "totally condemn this act which is unacceptable to the pharmacy teams that have been providing essential services since the beginning of the pandemic".

Canada has vaccinated 69.8% of its population, outpacing the US by 15.6%, according to data from Our World in Data, seen on CNN's vaccine tracker.

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Although most Canadians have welcomed public health measures and the country has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, the case count and hospitalizations are increasing, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada, especially among the youngest unvaccinated Canadians.

Police do not have the suspect's name or photo or security footage from the incident, Carrier said.

However, they have a description of the man and hope that with the help of the public they can identify him and charge him with assault.

The suspect is described as a 30- to 45-year-old man, 1.8 meters tall, of medium build with dark skin, short brown hair, thick eyebrows, two small piercings in each ear, and a tattoo on his hand that appeared to have the shaped like a cross, Carrier said.

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