The proportion of ambulance staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in South Australia is far higher than previously suggested, after the SA Ambulance Service (SAAS) conducted further investigations.

Key points:

  • Health Minister Stephen Wade last week said only 41 per cent of ambulance staff had received first doses
  • He today said that more reliable data had revealed the figure was actually 76 per cent
  • Ambulance staff who have not received first doses are today banned from attending “red zones”

Under questioning in budget estimates on Friday, Health Minister Stephen Wade said only 35 per cent of SAAS workers had received both shots of vaccine and 41 per cent had been given a first dose.

“I know that SAAS is continuing to offer vaccinations to its employees. I am confident that they will continue to work with their employees to provide opportunities to be vaccinated,” Mr Wade said last week.

But Mr Wade today provided an update, saying the real figure was likely almost twice as high as the one cited last week, and that more than three-quarters of metropolitan officers had received first doses.

He said that SAAS had recently introduced “a requirement that ambulance officers notify SAAS” about their vaccination status, and that “more reliable” data had subsequently become available.

“The South Australian Ambulance Service made contact with all of its metro crews in the last couple of days and sought an update,” he said.

“That’s an important part of making sure those crews and their patients are safe.

“SAAS’s advice to me is that the first set of data was based on voluntary notification, they went through a process in the last couple of days of sending messages to staff and requiring them to update their vaccination status — my understanding is that’s why the figure is more reliable and it’s higher.”

Many ambulance and paramedic service staff are deemed frontline healthcare workers and have been eligible to get their jabs since February.

From today, SA paramedics who have not received their first vaccine dose are banned from attending any jobs in a designated “red zone”, under the state’s COVID management directions.

Hospitals, healthcare facilities, airports, medi-hotels and quarantine facilities, as well as COVID-positive patients’ homes, have all been classified as red zones by SAAS.

SAAS said there was about one emergency call-out to a red zone each day and about four non-emergency cases.

“As of today, a person will be required to have had their first dose,” Mr Wade said.

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