Sunrise Covid scare prompts stars’ demand for crew to be vaccinated

The hosts of Sunrise, Australia’s most popular breakfast show, have refused to have their noses powdered and hair styled by any unvaccinated crew members.

Sunrise presenters Natalie Barr and David Koch. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The high-profile hosts of Sunrise, Australia’s most popular breakfast show, have refused to have their noses powdered and hair styled by any crew members who are unvaccinated, in what is likely to be a landmark development for the entire local television industry.

The Australian can reveal that the uprising at Sunrise, led by double-vaccinated hosts David Koch, Natalie Barr and Edwina Bartholomew, as well as the show’s executive producer Michael Pell, represents the unofficial first move towards mandatory vaccination in Australian TV.

But Seven’s morning TV pro-vaccination move attracted private grumbles from at least one Sunrise hair and make-up artist who is unvaccinated and therefore barred from working on the show.

The bold pro-vaccination push at Brekky Central will almost certainly make a splash elsewhere in the electronic media.

The media’s ‘‘essential worker’’ status during the Delta outbreak carries the greatest risks on TV, where it is hardest to be socially distanced because of the nature of live news.

Many staff who do hair and make-up on Koch, Barr and Bartholomew are freelancers who work on other shows throughout Sydney, still the country’s Covid-19 hotspot. The concern at Seven is about unvaccinated freelance make-up artists bringing the virus from other programs to Australia’s most-watched breakfast show.

Sunrise presenter Edwina Bartholomew. Picture: Richard Dobson

The development that created TV’s first mandatory vaccination scheme was a scare in late August for Bartholomew, who is considered especially vulnerable because she is currently pregnant with her second child, due in February.

Bartholomew was forced into two weeks of isolation that only ended last Thursday after the news and entertainment presenter was deemed a close contact of a fully vaccinated Sunrise crew member who had caught the virus.

The asymptomatic worker did not pass the virus on to anyone else, which senior Seven executives believe proved the value of both his double-vaccinated status and of mandatory Covid protocols on the Sunrise set, including daily rapid antigen tests and weekly PCR tests.

The positive case at Seven’s Martin Place HQ sharpened the focus on workers who presented weak points. As soon as Bartholomew entered her two weeks of isolation, a high-level dialogue began involving Sunrise executive producer Michael Pell, Koch, Barr and Bartholomew, with the quartet concerned about the potential ramifications from a small group of unvaccinated freelance make-up artists.

Sunrise executive producer Michael Pell. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

The Australian understands that Koch raised concerns about the risks to the pregnant Bartholomew, and also that at 65, he was himself in a vulnerable age group for Covid-19. Barr raised similar concerns about her own status as a parent of teenagers, and also went into bat for Bartholomew, who separately raised the matter. Pell led the charge to escalate the matter with management on behalf of his staff.

This all happened the week before last. Within 48 hours of the matter being raised by Sunrise with management, a ban on unvaccinated make-up staff was implemented.

This development came shortly after an all-staff Covid-19 vaccination survey at Seven, which CEO James Warburton revealed had shown that an “outstanding” 93 per cent of Seven employees were “committed to vaccination”, and that 74 per cent supported “a policy of mandatory vaccination”.

The Australian has been told that these developments have led to fears among the unvaccinated at Seven that the network will introduce a company-wide vaccination scheme like that of Qantas.