Mandatory vaccination for SA health workers to end November 24

Vaccination soon won’t be mandatory for health workers, but Nicola Spurrier says businesses can still demand staff be jabbed — and puts a grim toll on SA’s worst-case scenario.

Mandatory vaccination for ambulance officers and health, aged care and disability care workers is ending — but chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier said individual businesses could still choose to mandate vaccination for workers if they wished.

The remaining legal requirements triggered by Covid apart from reporting positive RAT tests come to an end on November 24 and will be replaced by occupational health and safety policies enforced by businesses rather than government.

Appearing before parliament’s Covid oversight committee on Wednesday, Prof Spurrier said South Australia was in a good place to make changes but the situation could have been far worse without action early in the pandemic.

“We would have had tens of thousands of deaths if we had let the virus in and we hadn’t managed to stomp it out like we did before we had a fully vaccinated community,” she said.

SA has had 1027 deaths from Covid.

Professor Nicola Spurrier appeared before parliament’s Covid oversight committee on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

“It is not sustainable for the government to be in charge of everything, responsibility has to go back to the whole community,” Prof Spurrier said.

“That’s not just individuals — businesses and workplaces, now is their time to shine.”

Asked if businesses could mandate vaccination for staff, Prof Spurrier replied: “Yep, if a business thought for whatever reason their workforce was more at risk and there could be some benefit for them, then they could do that.”

Prof Spurrier said there had been no “uptick” in positive cases since mandatory isolation ended but added it was still too early to tell — and stressed people should take personal responsibility by staying home if they are sick.

She praised the public for its response, saying “people want to look after other people in this state” and noting SA has the Goldilocks advantage: “It is a really nice sized state, everyone knows each other, it’s not too small, it’s not too big.”

The result is SA now is “in a very different place” due to widespread vaccination and the introduction of antivirals, which is easing pressure on hospitals.

Noting masks are no longer mandatory in settings such as public transport, Prof Spurrier said wearing them in public now needs to take into account the situation.

“When cases are low and risks are low we can go without masks but when numbers go up we want people to get back on board,” she said.

She revealed modelling showed the next wave will see a peak of around 75 hospital cases a day close to Christmas, vastly less than previous waves, and while the emergency phase of Covid is over the pandemic is not.

“The virus is with us almost indefinitely,” she said.

“The only way to stop those recurring waves is to have everybody in the world vaccinated and have a vaccine that is sterilising — so it stops you getting infected — and this is obviously a long way off, so we will expect to have subsequent waves.”