mattwnz: Won’t it become a requirement in NZ workplaces for health and safety?

It's not so simple. Businesses can not make a blanket mandate for employees to be vaccinated without justification.

mattwnz: Won’t it become a requirement in NZ workplaces for health and safety? Isn’t it adjust compulsory for border workers?

You would think so. But the wide net has not yet got everyone.

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE2108/S00195/maritime-union-statement-on-port-worker-vaccination.htm 

Depends on where you go, and their requirements. IE No visit unless both obtained. Or no visit unless 1st.

Everyone, has until 30th.

Handle9:

mattwnz: Won’t it become a requirement in NZ workplaces for health and safety?

It's not so simple. Businesses can not make a blanket mandate for employees to be vaccinated without justification.

@mattwnz: The thing is that the government has increased the fines today anyway.

 

No. The release says "Penalties for breaches of COVID-19 orders are set to significantly increase from early November 2021 to better reflect the seriousness of any behaviour that threatens New Zealand’s response to the virus, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today."

That doesn't help.

 I couldn't believe that when I read it. Just insane to not bring in the increased fines immediately.

Cuba over decades has invested heavily in its own vaccine research and production, out of necessity.
Soberana 2 and Abdala have an efficacy rate of more than 90%, according to their clinical trials.
Production has been slowed by global shortages of precursor chemicals.

Cuba vaccinates children as young as 2 in strategy to reopen schools, economy
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/19/americas/cuba-children-vaccination-intl/index.html

""
Like adults receiving vaccinations, children in Cuba will require three shots before they are considered fully vaccinated.
With the arrival of the Delta variant in Cuba, cases among children have skyrocketed.
""

Cuba’s health system buckles under strain of overwhelming Covid surge
A lack of medical supplies is crippling the Covid response, amid an economic crisis sparked by the pandemic and US sanctions
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/22/cuba-coronavirus-vaccines-health-system

""
“There are no antibiotics, no painkillers, the basic list of medicines is almost all out of stock,” said Daniela, a family doctor in Havana who has hardly had a day off since the pandemic began.
""
The country’s main oxygen factory recently broke down, compounding the intensive care crisis.
""

I wonder how we are situated re excess oxygen tank and regulator supply ?

Scott3:

 

I think it needs to be passed into law, which takes some time.

 

Correct. She said it was part of the Covid Response 2020 amendment bill to be heard. 

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/BILL_115898/tab/sop 

https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2021/0068/latest/LMS552335.html#LMS552334 

It would also appear there are some changes to allocation and wording around it.

tdgeek:

 

Mattwnz

 

Not being flippant, but if you took over Dr A's job today, what would you do to resolve this outbreak? 

 

- wuthout touching on what people could have done -

depends on what the govt wants to achieve. 

he does not govern. he does what the govt wants.

he's done what he can now. 

99.9% of people are following. there are people moving underground, in boots of cars, in prison vans, private jets etc and that is beyond his jurisdiction. MOH can do all they want but there are things that are failing that are not MOH issues that will undermine everything they do. so i'd do nothing and await orders.

Handle9:

mattwnz: Won’t it become a requirement in NZ workplaces for health and safety?

It's not so simple. Businesses can not make a blanket mandate for employees to be vaccinated without justification.

mattwnz:

Handle9:

 

It's not so simple. Businesses can not make a blanket mandate for employees to be vaccinated without justification.

 

I seem to recall this being discussed on a NZ podcast and they were discussing requirements company owners to provide safe work places. Think it was was either the Kaka or When the facts change.

Yes they are required to provide a safe workplace. Vaccination isn't necessarily required to do this.

If vaccination is not part of your employment agreement the employer can't mandate you to be vaccinated. To make it a health and safety requirement the employer must demonstrate the risk caused by you not being vaccinated is significant. If they don't then you can tell your employer to go take a hike. You do not even have to disclose your vaccination status to your employer.

I would like to see employers being able to make vaccination mandatory but this is very difficult political ground for a Labour government. 

https://www.employment.govt.nz/leave-and-holidays/other-types-of-leave/coronavirus-workplace/covid-19-vaccination-and-employment/ 

freitasm:

 

@mattwnz: The thing is that the government has increased the fines today anyway.

 

 

No. The release says "Penalties for breaches of COVID-19 orders are set to significantly increase from early November 2021 to better reflect the seriousness of any behaviour that threatens New Zealand’s response to the virus, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today."

 

That doesn't help.

 

They should have been passed into law immediately, not hard to adjust some numbers in the fines column of a breakout box.

Also they should enact that anyone caught using their essential status to get across the border for non essential reasons should have it immediately cancelled, if they cant attend their jobs over the border too bad, shouldnt have abused the exemption.

To those who think jacking up the fines wouldnt help, the guy with the caravans trip to Christchurch and back would have cost him $1000, plus a $300 fine, not bad.

$1000 plus a $4000 fine, yeah not so good, that caravan deal had better be great, $1000 plus a $12000 fine, yeah, nah no caravan deal is worth that.

alexx:

 

You might have noticed from the same series of graphs, our vaccination rate has dropped from a peak of around 1.6 doses per 100 people per day in late August and early September, to something closer to 1.0 now.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-vaccination-doses-per-capita?country=NZL+AUS+USA+GBR+JPN+PRT+ESP+DNK

 

Meanwhile it's easier to get a vaccination now than it was in the beginning of September. Now that we appear to be past our peak, maybe someone can do some curve fitting to predict where we might be in a few weeks or months.

 

It would be good to know the vaccination rates for each area and whether there is a correlation with people coming out of level 3/4. Perhaps they feel there no longer any rush to get vaccinated. It would not surprise me if the same is beginning to happen in Auckland, where many people perceive it to be a "South Auckland" problem.

 

We should expect a big second bulge in our vaccination rate curve in a couple of weeks. The recommended 6 week gap after that couple of weeks of massive numbers straight after our outbreak was detected.

I am most interested in our first dose numbers at the moment as they are a leading metric. Seems most people that get one dose follow through and finish the course.

The way I see it (if we fail at dropping cases) we have about 2 months before stuff starts to get really intense. People that get their first dose today, and run a 6 week spacing will be fully immunized by then. 

Before the outbreak was detected our first dose daily were around 27000, they then peaked on the 26th & 27th Aug, with around 67,000 first doses a day. There were about 2 weeks of that, then a steady decline. Yesterday they were 24,522 first doses given. 

That number in itself isn't bad. at 25k a day (7 days a week) it would only take 6 weeks to do 100% of our eligible population, 5 weeks to get to 95%, 4 weeks to get to 90%.

But it is going to be extremely challenging to keep that rate up as we approach saturation.