The New South Wales government will not seek to mandate booster shots for healthcare workers, despite calls from Victoria to change the definition of a fully vaccinated person to include a third dose.
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) is currently preparing advice for national cabinet that is expected to recommend expanding the definition of full vaccination against Covid-19 to three shots.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has pushed hard for the change. Essential workers in that state have already been told they must get their third dose to continue working on site, and Andrews suggested last week the requirement may be expanded to people wishing to access hospitality venues.
South Australia has also already mandated the booster jab for workers in healthcare, aged care, and people with disabilities, while the South Australian premier, Steven Marshall, said it was “increasingly likely” that people would need a third dose to be considered fully vaccinated.
Last week the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, said changing the definition of fully vaccinated “makes sense”, and in early January the state’s health minister, Brad Hazzard, said that “anybody for whom vaccination was mandatory already will now have boosters mandated”.
But on Thursday Hazzard told the Guardian that after consulting with both the Health Services Union and the Nurses and Midwives’ Association the state government would no longer push ahead with the mandate for the state’s strained health workers.
“Certainly in early January, when the numbers were increasing dramatically off the back of Omicron and before the number of furloughed workers started dropping, as health minister I was certainly serious about moving towards a mandate position for the third dose,” he said.
“But I also then did what I hope any sensible health minister would do and that is talk to those that represent our health workers, being the HSU and also the Nurses and Midwives’ Association and others, and they made it clear that health workers are, as we all know, quite exhausted and tired from two years of intense frontline work.”
Hazzard did not indicate whether the change in approach would also apply to other essential workers.
While Atagi is expected to advise a shift in the definition of a fully vaccinated person to include a third dose, Hazzard said that was a separate issue from making booster shots mandatory.
“We’ve decided to take essentially a more encouraging and nurturing approach to getting them all [boosted], rather than forcing the issue and jumping in with mandates,” he said.
“They are all double vaccinated and chances are they will proceed to get a booster regardless. They’re health workers and the vast majority would understand the need to get the booster.
“That’s the current position NSW is taking. We would like to work with our health workers.”
On Thursday, NSW Labor criticised the government for not having already introduced the booster mandate for health workers, following a Sydney Morning Herald report that showed while 68% of those in their 70s had been boosted, less than a third of people under 40 have had the third shot.
“Every bit of international evidence indicates that a third dose of vaccine is essential in fighting Omicron and future Covid variants,” the Labor leader, Chris Minns, said.
“I want to make it very clear that it’s not a case [of] forcing people to take a dose that they don’t want to take. 94.9% of people in this state who are of adult age have two doses of that vaccine.”
But the secretary of the Health Services Union, Gerard Hayes, told the Guardian he had lobbied the government not to push ahead with a third-dose mandate.
“It’s been two and a bit years, health workers are tired. They’re beyond tired. They’re chronically fatigued and at the edge of their tether. We don’t believe you can just put a health order on top of a health order. This is about bringing people with you.
“They’re health workers. They don’t need a ‘do this or else’. We’re all mature and we know what’s going on now. We have said, don’t drop another bomb on them and say, ‘Here, do this’.
It is not clear how the NSW government would have enforced any mandate, with the Guardian able to reveal that the state has not kept track of how many health workers in the state have received booster shots so far.
In response to questions asked in parliament this week the government said the state’s health department only held vaccination data for “employees who are vaccinated by a NSW Health service”.
But all employees who received a vaccination by “providers external to NSW Health” such as pharmacists or GPs were not required to log their vaccination status.
“Staff who choose to be vaccinated by providers external to NSW Health are not required to disclose their third dose vaccination and these records may not be captured,” the minister’s office stated.
The government said that as of 18 January, some 35.1% of clinical staff and 29.7% of non-clinical staff have had their third covid vaccine recorded. But that data did not include “healthcare workers employed in the private or other sectors outside of NSW Health”.
Minns told the Guardian it was “extraordinary that the government does not have an accurate number of how many of its essential health staff have had a booster”.
“We all know the third shot is critical to protect against Omicron. But what we don’t know is how many of our essential healthcare workers are actually protected by a booster shot because this government simply isn’t tracking that.”
