It will soon be mandatory for the Western Australian health care workforce to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to access health facilities for work purposes. This workforce will be eligible for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
The new Health Worker (Restrictions on Access) Directions, makes COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for health care and support workers across health care facilities, including public and private hospitals and public health service facilities.
Mandatory vaccinations will be introduced in a staged approach, with workers in the highest risk settings and tier one facilities needing to be vaccinated first.
Tier one facilities include intensive care units, high dependency units, respiratory wards, emergency departments, COVID-19 clinics, COVID-19 vaccination clinics and hospital wards with designated respiratory beds in certain regional hospitals. Tier two facilities include all public and private hospitals.
The directions provide exemptions for certain categories of employees, which include medical exemptions and other temporary exemptions. Immunisation medical exemption criteria is available from the Australian Government website (external link).
For more information about the timelines for vaccination, see the media statement (external link).
