Vaccine mandate greatly expanded

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Government will mandate the Covid-19 vaccine for any worker of a business that requires a vaccine certificate at entry.

Yesterday, Ardern said Cabinet had decided to place the mandate on businesses, meaning restaurants, cafe´s, gyms, and other ‘‘close proximity’’ businesses which choose to operate with greater freedoms, while requiring vaccine certification, will have to comply.

‘‘The more people who are vaccinated the safer we all are. That gives us options, and the ability to keep people safe without having to use some of the more blanket restrictions that we’ve used in the past,’’ Ardern said.

A person’s vaccination status will become increasingly relevant to how they can participate in usual activities under the Government’s proposed ‘‘traffic light’’ system, which will replace the alert level system when each District Health Board reaches 90 per cent vaccination levels.

Under the system, businesses will be able to operate without restrictions on capacity or social distancing if they agree to require customers to prove they have been vaccinated through the vaccine certification system the Government is developing.

If there is a high-level of Covid19 risk, and the system is at the ‘‘red light’’ setting, businesses that don’t require vaccine certification will not be allowed to operate, whereas businesses that require their customers to be vaccinated will operate with limited restrictions. Retail businesses have been excluded from this vaccination certification system.

Ardern said ‘‘people would raise questions’’ if

the Government introduced a vaccine certification system that could require customers to be vaccinated, but did not require workers in those businesses to be vaccinated.

Further mandates were being considered by the Government, including for public sector workers with public-facing jobs.

Workplace Relations Minister Michael Wood said, under these changes, up to 40 per cent of the country’s workforce could be covered by vaccine mandates.

The Government earlier this month decided it would mandate Covid-19 vaccinations for health and disability sector workers, teachers and early learning staffers, by December 1 and January 1 respectively. Mandates were placed on managed isolation and quarantine workers and airport and port staff earlier in the year.