NZ Herald | 13 Nov 2021
A public health expert is warning about the potential pitfalls of vaccine mandates as the final date for education and health workers to receive their first Pfizer jab looms.
From Monday the majority of health and disability and education workforces must have received one dose, and be fully vaccinated by January 1, 2022.
Prison and Corrections staff have already been mandated to receive their first dose of the vaccine by November 6, and their second is due by December 8.
Workers at the border and in MIQ settings are already required to be fully vaccinated.
While a majority of experts are in strong support of vaccine mandates as a tool to protect workers against infection, and to reduce transmission, one public health expert has claimed they have already caused “substantial harm and division in our country”.
Auckland University of Technology (AUT) professor of public health Grant Schofield said mandates will lead to job losses among those unvaccinated, and that will put a strain on the health system.
“Come Monday I know of real teachers, real GPs, real mid-wives, real physios, real people without jobs,” he said in a social media post yesterday.
These people were not “lunatic fringe anti-vaxxers” but “people often making their own rational decision”, Schofield, who is fully vaccinated, said.
“We can predict that the exact thing we are trying to avoid, overwhelming the health system, is exactly what we are going to do by firing health workers.
“This will cause serious harm. It almost certainly will mean that our already overwhelmed health and education systems will not have the staff to carry out normal duties.”
