The deans of SA’s medical and dental schools have recommended compulsory coronavirus vaccination for their students and the general healthcare workforce, arguing it will protect individuals from serious illness and help slow the spread of the disease.
Healthcare workers are at particularly high risk because their jobs often expose them to high levels of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
The recommendation comes as the government’s national immunisation drive gathers pace, and debate about mandatory vaccination policies intensifies. Financial services and health insurer Discovery announced last week it will move to a mandatory vaccination policy for its SA-based staff from January, and various other employers, including private school operator Curro, are considering introducing similar policies.
“The case for Covid-19 immunisation transcends individual benefit and has major benefits for the good of the broader health facility community, including fellow colleagues and patients whose lives are entrusted to the care of the healthcare worker,” the SA Committee of Medical Deans (Sacomd) and the SA Committee of Dental Deans (Sacodd) said in a joint statement on Tuesday. “As such, it is a moral imperative for healthcare to submit to vaccination against Covid-19.
The organisations represent higher education institutions that train the SA healthcare work force.
The deans also recommended booster shots for healthcare workers who have already been immunised with a single shot of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. While there was clear evidence that a single J&J jab reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death by 74% and 97%, respectively, there was as yet no data on its effectiveness against infection and mild illness.
“Its efficacy is expected to be substantially lower than two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which induces substantially higher concentrations of neutralising antibodies than a single dose of J&J,” they said. Booster shots of J&J or the Pfizer vaccine should be considered, they said.
Covid-19 vaccination reduced the risk of transmission by 2 to 2.8 times, decreased the likelihood of long Covid, and reduced the chances of healthcare workers infecting patients and the people they lived with, the deans said.
Discovery estimates that vaccinating 60% of SA’s population in the coming months could save more than 30,000 lives. It said its policy recognised the right of employees to object to being vaccinated, but it hoped to persuade its employees to vaccinate voluntarily before the end of the year. It said it had sought advice from constitutional law experts, and its position was defensible given the current public health crisis posed by Covid-19.
Trade union Solidarity, which has previously said it was opposed to mandatory vaccination, said it had received a complaint about Discovery’s policy from one of its members, but had yet to determine whether to take legal action.
“We see this decision by Discovery as ridiculous, unconstitutional and unfair, and if we receive a mandate from a member that works at Discovery and there is substantive merit to litigate, we will most certainly do so,” said Anton van der Bijl, Solidarity’s head of legal matters. “The constitution places a premium on the right to bodily integrity, as well as the right to freedom of association and freedom to express your faith. For an employer to limit [those] rights is unconstitutional,” he said.
Trade union federation Cosatu said it would prefer to see workers volunteer to get vaccinated.
“Forcing people provokes a negative reaction and creates a poisoned debate. We don’t want to go the route of the US where everything is contested,” said Cosatu parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks.
Discovery’s policy was in line with guidance issued by the labour department, as it respected employees’ rights to decline vaccination if they had reasonable grounds to do so and committed the employer to looking at alternative working environments for people who opted not to get vaccinated, he said.
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