No plans to lift jab mandate for SA health workers: Spurrier

Professor Nicola Spurrier says there are no plans to lift vaccine mandates for health workers, as she earlier hinted SA could soon end the need for close contacts to isolate.

Professor Nicola Spurrier says there are no plans to lift vaccine mandates for health workers, after mandates were dumped for education staff and police officers last month.

Prof Spurrier made the announcement on Friday, as she held a press conference to let the public know a child had died in SA after testing positive to Covid.

Asked if there were any plans to lift vaccination requirements for health workers, Prof Spurrier implied jabs would always be needed for these workers.

But she did add that there was a need to find another legal instrument than a mandate under the emergency declaration, to require health workers to be vaccinated.

Meanwhile, she said authorities were investigating a single test for Covid and flu as winter nears.

“We are looking at shifting the focus to primary health care and possibly having a single test for Covid and flu,” she said.

Replay the Covid press conference

Ealier, the state’s chief public health officer said a national plan to remove isolation for close contacts will be followed by South Australia if the current Omicron variant wave subsides.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee on Thursday released a winter preparedness statement, and recommended a “nationally consistent, risk-based transition to the removal of the requirement for close contacts of Covid-19 cases to quarantine”.

It said following the peak of the BA.2 Omicron sub-variant wave, quarantine will be replaced by other measures which may include frequent rapid antigen testing, wearing masks when leaving the house, working from home if possible, limiting access to high risk settings and monitoring of symptoms.

Professor Nicola Spurrier. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said SA Health was reviewing the winter preparedness plan as the country sees a high vaccination level.

“So this is in terms of when we move forward, and that really depends on how we’re going with our current wave and that BA.2 Omicron variant wave,” Prof Spurrier told ABC Radio Adelaide on Friday.

“But at some point, nationwide, we’d like to move to a place of not requiring quarantining for a close contact but putting some other risk mitigation in place.

“We’re just monitoring when we can get to that situation, it’s just not the time at the minute.”

She said if the quarantine changes are made, it would be after the peak in cases – expected within days, according to recent modelling.

“When you’re going in a peak, if you make significant changes like that you amplify the number of case, whereas when you’re down the other side of the peak, it’s much safer to make those sorts of quite significant changes. And of course, all of this is helped if people are vaccinated.”

Prof Spurrier also said rules around classroom contacts were changing.

Parents will no longer be informed of each individual classroom contact, but will now be notified only if there are five or more Covid cases in a class within seven days.

It is a system which some Catholic schools have already adopted, as it becomes too onerous on schools to report every Covid case.