South Australia likely to make big change to vaccine mandate rules

One state is considering a major change to vaccine mandates after smashing another record for daily Covid case numbers.

South Australian healthcare workers will soon need to have their booster shot to be considered fully vaccinated, in a major change to the state’s vaccine mandate.

Premier Steven Marshall announced the state government would “likely” make it compulsory for frontline healthcare, aged care and disability workers to have their third dose within two weeks of becoming eligible.

Only once they've had that booster shot will they be considered fully vaccinated — which is the same requirement for healthcare workers in Western Australia.

The Premier said Police Commissioner Grant Stevens was drafting the direction.

“It is very important that we get those people in the frontline as protected as possible because we’ve got to make sure we preserve as much of our health workforce as we possible can through this period,” Mr Marshall said.

It will “likely” be mandated for frontline healthcare workers to receive their booster shot, the premier has warned. NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

It was also revealed there would be changes to elective surgery in the next 24 hours — limiting it so only category one and urgent procedures could be undertaken — to ease the load on hospitals.

The Premier acknowledged the changes would be “hugely inconvenient” for the community, but said the significantly increasing number of cases was too much of a concern.

“We're doing this to preserve our healthcare workforce to the important task which lies ahead with the Omicron variant,” he said.

“The severity of the symptoms are lower but if we have everyone hitting the health system at exactly the same time, it will overwhelm the health system and that's why we need to stay on the front foot.”

South Australia recorded 1471 new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

The state’s Covid-19 cases surged passed 1000 on Wednesday, reaching 1471 new infections from 22,734 tests.

Mr Marshall said he expected the daily number of cases to double every three or four days.

He again urged residents to work from home where possible through to at least the end of January.

The premier said 36 people remained in hospital with five of them in intensive care.

Premier Steven Marshall said he expected daily case numbers to double every three or four days. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Emma Brasier

Each day, South Australia continues to beat its highest ever daily case numbers with its highest being just 73 infections less than two weeks ago.

But the state is not alone with both NSW and Victoria also continually setting new records.

NSW reported 11,201 new cases on Wednesday – another record – and three new deaths on Wednesday.

Victoria set a new high with 3767 new cases and also recorded five deaths in the past 24 hours.

Originally published as South Australia likely to make big change to vaccine mandate rules