Victoria’s chief health officer is yet to provide advice to the state government on whether a third Covid-19 vaccine dose should be mandated, despite the premier flagging the change.
Daniel Andrews has for some time called for national cabinet to change the definition of “fully vaccinated” to mean three doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, rather than two.
“I’ll follow the advice of experts and I think we’re very close to a situation where the relevant federal authorities will determine that three doses is what’s considered fully protected. As for fourth and fifth, let’s wait and see how this goes,” he told reporters on Sunday.
“There has already been some mandating done for third doses and there will be more. Whether that’s popular or not, that’s not my concern. Politics doesn’t work against this virus, you’ve got to make difficult decisions, and then push forward from there.”
But speaking at the first public hearing of Victorian state parliament’s pandemic declaration accountability and oversight committee on Monday, the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton said he and the premier had not discussed revising existing mandates.
“I haven’t been requested to provide advice on broader vaccine mandates at this stage,” Professor Sutton said.
“When and if I get a request from the (health) minister for advice on those potential measures, I’ll be very happy to assess the epidemiological situation of that time and to provide my recommendations on how that might change, if at all.”
Asked by Liberal MP Georgie Crozier if the premier was “making these decisions without your input”, Sutton replied: “I don’t believe there have been any decisions made”.
On 10 January, acting chief health officer Ben Cowie’s advice was that a mandate for third doses was not yet required.
“I have considered a consistent one-size-fits-all approach to vaccination mandates for all workforces and even for the general community but, at this time, I do not consider this to be a proportionate response,” he said.
“Victorians are voluntarily accessing booster doses at high numbers.”
As of Monday, 38.9% of Victorians aged over 18 have had three vaccine doses.
Sutton said authorities will have to consider introducing further booster shots if there is evidence of waning immunity about six to 12 months after the third dose.
“It may well be the case of a booster at an annual interval or something akin to that the same way that we’re challenged with flu virus and the need for an annual booster for everyone,” he said.
The new cross-party parliamentary committee was set up when the state’s new pandemic-specific legislation came into effect late last year.
Under the laws, the responsibility for declaring a pandemic and imposing public health restrictions has been transferred from the chief health officer to the premier and health minister respectively.
As well as reviewing pandemic orders, the committee can recommend changes and refer matters to Victorian ombudsman Deborah Glass for investigation.
Sutton told the committee the health minister must seek his advice before issuing new restrictions but does not necessarily need to follow it.
He said the decision to increase crowds for the Australian Open finals from 65% capacity to 80% was made by health minister Martin Foley alone.
“I had a request for a public health view and I provided no recommendation for or against. I said that it was primarily a matter of social licence and social considerations as a really significant public event,” Sutton said.
The public health team was also not involved in the decision to grant world mens no 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic a medical exemption to play, he said.
Sutton is also confident the state has reached the peak of Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations.
“I think that peak will look bumpy, it will have up and down days but it won’t significantly increase from the position we are in right now,” he said.
However, he has no plans “at this point in time” to change current recommendations to work from home.
“Children (are) returning to school today … and we do expect transmission to occur as a result,” he said.
“The recommendation to work from home will help counteract that because kids going back to school are going to slow the decrease in case numbers that we might otherwise see.”
Victoria recorded 10,053 new Covid-19 infections and eight deaths on Monday, while there are 889 people in hospital battling the virus.
The committee intends to hold further public hearings throughout the year.
