Private hospitals mandate vaccination for staff

Private hospital groups Mediclinic and Life Healthcare have introduced Covid-19 vaccination policies for staff and service providers, joining a steadily growing number of JSE-listed companies that have followed the lead of life and health insurer Discovery.

While the SA Human Rights Commission said earlier this week that a law mandating vaccination would not be at odds with the constitution, the government has stopped short of making vaccination compulsory for fear of pushback, with unions opposed to compulsory immunisation.

The government, which previously came in for heavy criticism for being slow to secure vaccines, is banking on shoring up flagging demand for vaccines through mass drives, such as the Vooma campaign launched last weekend, and moves by the private sector to require inoculation for entry into establishments, mass events or in the workplace.

SA had by October 5 administered 18.3-million shots and fully immunised 8.9-million people with the single-shot Johnson & Johnson jab or the double-shot Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This is about 22.4% of the adult population, far short of the government’s target of reaching 70% by year end.

Getting to that level is seen as key to returning to normal life and avoiding economically damaging lockdowns such as those that contributed to GDP sliding 6.4% in 2020 and a loss of more than 1-million jobs.

Mediclinic’s policy, which came into effect on October 1, requires everyone to be fully vaccinated by February 2022.

“Firstly, we believe it is the right thing to do. And secondly,

we think legislation forces us to do this,” said Mediclinic Southern Africa CEO Koert Pretorius. The Occupational Health and Safety Act requires employers to ensure they provide a safe work environment.

“We think it is ethically and morally justified to force [sic] people to get vaccinated. All businesses and government should introduce mandatory vaccination,” he said in an interview with Business Day.

An exemption policy is being finalised to take account of people who had reasonable grounds for not getting inoculated.

Pretorius said the hospital group had an ethical and moral obligation as a healthcare provider to provide a safe environment for staff and patients.

“We don’t want people to come to our hospitals and be exposed to an unnecessary risk to something that can be easily managed,” he said.

Mediclinic’s mandatory vaccination policy will for the time being apply only to its SA and Namibian operations and would apply to employees, service providers and healthcare professionals, such as doctors, who had rooms and admitting privileges at Mediclinic, he said.

Mediclinic owns Swiss hospital group Hirslanden and operates hospitals in the Middle East.

Life Healthcare told staff last week that it was introducing a compulsory vaccination policy that will require all head office employees to be vaccinated by December 1, the first step in a phased plan that aims to have all staff vaccinated by mid-2022. The next step will be compulsory vaccinations for its SA hospitals, followed by its UK and European businesses.

“We believe the scientific evidence is absolutely clear: vaccinated people are much less likely to infect others, far less likely to end up in ICU or high care and far less likely to die,” said Life Healthcare CEO Peter Wharton-Hood.

In a letter sent to doctors last week, Life Healthcare said a fully vaccinated workforce was in the best interest of the safety of employees, doctors and the country at large. It had consulted extensively with legal advisers and believed a compulsory vaccination policy was acceptable.

“We will engage in extensive consultation processes at hospital[s] to ensure we follow guidelines, and engage with stakeholders to ensure the policy is correctly implemented,” he said.