Throughout the ebb and flow of WA's various COVID restrictions, one rule has remained steady for months now — workplace vaccination requirements.
Since late last year, about 60 per cent of WA workers have been required to be vaccinated to continue working and from today, this cohort will need to have had their third booster shot.
But with WA achieving world-leading vaccination rates and about a quarter of people having some level of immunity from having recently had the virus, questions have been raised about the utility of those mandates.
However, experts and the government say there should be little change, at least in the short term.
WA's current mandates apply to a wide range of workers, including those in emergency services, health care, supermarkets and cafes.
It certainly limits what the unvaccinated can do, but nowhere near as much as previously, when proof of vaccination was needed to dine in at restaurants and even purchase alcohol.
Workplace mandates 'still appropriate'
When those rules were wound back, only about 1 per cent, or roughly 22,000 West Australians, were not double-dose vaccinated.
"With the very high two-dose vaccination rates achieved, the proportionality of this measure is now reduced," Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson said in his most recent public advice.
But Dr Robertson said the workplace mandates were still appropriate and proportionate in the workplace, given people with only two doses were over-represented by a factor of three in hospitalisations.
The latest figures show 81.6 per cent of Western Australians are triple-dose vaccinated.
More than a month since that advice was prepared, Curtin University Population Health Professor Jaya Dantas said little had changed.
"I don't think we should get rid of [workplace mandates] at this stage," she said.
"We are still in the midst of a global pandemic, and we've seen multiple waves go through.
"I think it's better to be prudent and cautious, and use this cautious, sensible approach at least for the next year or so."
Professor Dantas said while people should take responsibility for their own safety in a range of settings, vaccination was one space where the government should still set the rules.
Liberals question mandate
Liberal leader David Honey is among those questioning the continued requirement for people to be vaccinated to work.
"We're one of the most vaccinated populations in the world, it's hard to understand now why you're maintaining that requirement for people in workplaces," he said in a Facebook video earlier this month.
But when asked yesterday, senior government minister David Templeman said the mandate would remain "for the foreseeable future".
"The vaccine mandate's been a very important part of dealing with COVID, it's made us very safe," he said.
Premier Mark McGowan has previously said the mandate would remain until the third-dose rate was "way over" 80 per cent.
Katie Attwell studies vaccination policy at the University of WA and said the mandates had been critical in driving WA's vaccination rates to levels envied around the globe.
But she said other factors were also likely at play.
"Should further doses come online down the track or should [the government] want to use the mandates for new and improved COVID vaccines … having those mandates already in place makes it much easier to do so," she said.
"It's much harder to bring in a vaccine mandate than it is to remove one."
Fourth doses possible
Since Monday more Australians have been eligible for a fourth "winter booster", including those aged over 65 and those with severely compromised immune systems.
Australia's vaccine advisory group has not yet recommended a fourth dose for everyone but has said it will continue to monitor whether that will be necessary.
Dr Attwell said removing mandates also risked sending the wrong message to the community, particularly for those who were recommended to get a fourth dose.
"You communicate to the public that you no longer think it's as important to be vaccinated, compared to what you used to think as a government," she said.
Healthcare workers were among the first to be subject to vaccine mandates in WA, with the first taking effect seven months ago.
Figures tabled in Parliament last year revealed 52 staff had left the health system over the mandate by November, out of about 50,000 health staff statewide.
At the time, Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Mark Olson cautioned there were likely many more on leave because they weren't vaccinated.
As he did then, Mr Olson said he continued to support mandates for health staff, rejecting suggestions their removal could help ease staffing pressures in hospitals.
"For the small number of people [who are unvaccinated], it's not going to deliver, and I think it would make the others who did the right thing very angry," he said.
Health staff under pressure
A spokesperson for Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said on Monday that 3,257 health workers were furloughed because of COVID at the last count.
Firefighters joined St John Ambulance paramedics on the road for the first time over the weekend to help with staffing pressures in the ambulance service.
Dr Attwell said even though the mandates came at a deep cost for some, there were few reasons for mandates to be removed, including to relieve the pressures they added to struggling workforces.
"These mandates haven't just removed people from jobs, they've removed people from careers that in many cases they've dedicated many years of study to, they've accumulated HECS debts," she said.
"It's not evident at this point that the government, or indeed the public, would want unvaccinated healthcare workers, teachers, back in those positions at this point."
But with the government's popularity in WA, she believes there is little political cost to keeping the rules in place, and so almost no reason to remove them.
"This is a government that is pretty free to follow its nose in terms of the policies that it's been implementing over the last couple of years to keep everybody safe from COVID," Dr Attwell said.
"I think that they will not be particularly bothered by the costs that a very small minority of people are accruing the longer these mandates go on, and instead they will recognise that they have very strong public support for the range of measures that have kept us safe."
