Dr. Nick Coatsworth says that while he initially supported the move, that period has passed
Australia’s former deputy chief health officer is calling on employers to scrap vaccine mandates in workplaces. Dr. Nick Coatsworth said in an opinion page at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) that there is "no longer a public health rationale for businesses terminating employees for failing to be vaccinated."
According to Coatsworth, while he initially supported mandates, that period has passed.
"The COVID-19 environment has changed and the time for corporate vaccine mandates has changed," he wrote in the article, adding that if employers want to claim their mandates were an "exercise of corporate social responsibility to limit the burden of disease, that argument is now discordant with reality."
The former health official also enlisted two reasons why this would be the case. For one, he pointed out that vaccines no longer reduce transmission because of the more infections Omicron variant; and second, high vaccination rates had already reduced the impact on the healthcare systems.
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The former deputy chief health officer, who is a critic of tougher pandemic measures, doubled down on these reasons in an interview with SkyNews.
"In the past, certainly in 2021, when the vaccines came out during the Delta outbreak, we saw that as vaccine rates increased, the epidemic curve started to decrease, and there was likely effect on transmission," he said during the interview.
"But the contagiousness of Omicron has overwhelmed that, so you couldn't have a workplace safety reason for having a vaccine mandate because it simply doesn't reduce the risk of vaccinated co-workers getting the virus so that's out the window," he added.
He further claimed that Australians of working age were no longer severely impacted by the virus thanks to the high vaccination rates.
"Mandates have a role but it's very early on when you need to protect as many lives as possible when there are too many unknown unknowns," he said in the interview.
Coatsworth questioned the relevance of the mandates, especially as amid financial hardship, hardship within the family, and mental health issues.
"I think the answer is no," he said. "Corporations should really rethink any vaccine mandate that they have at the moment."
