COVID vaccinations will soon be mandatory in the ACT for disability support workers and in-home and community aged care workers.
Workers in these sectors will be required to have had their first vaccine dose by November 1 and be fully vaccinated by November 29 under a new public order.
The mandate will apply to workers engaged by a registered NDIS provider or state or territory government to assist people with disability with daily life tasks and personal activities, group and centre-based activities or that provide support to clients who work at a social enterprise business.
It will also apply to people in the in-home and community aged care sector if they deliver home care services for the aged-care sector or Commonwealth, state or territory governments.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said while Canberra had a high vaccine rate, Commonwealth data indicated the rate was not as high among disability workers.
She said the latest figures from the federal government showed 87 per cent of NDIS-screened workers had received at least one vaccine dose.
The fully vaccinated rate among those workers was 79.4 per cent.
But Ms Stephen-Smith said she suspected this was an underestimate as workers had not been required to report their vaccine status, making it difficult for employers to know the true rate among their workers.
She also said the lower rate could be due to the younger age of support workers.
"I think we also need to remember that while we have a very high vaccination rate across the community, that fully vaccinated rate has been largely driven by older people," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"A lot of people who work in this sector are younger people and they're people in insecure work, often from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who may not necessarily feel that they have good access to mainstream health services."
Early in Canberra's latest COVID wave, there was an outbreak in the disability support sector in which both clients and support workers contracted the virus.
Minister for Disability Emma Davidson said the mandate would provide confidence for people with disability.
"The disability and aged care sectors provide a lot of essential support for many people and play an important role to support their individual needs to make Canberra a more inclusive place," Ms Davidson said.
"Some of the people they support have felt uncomfortable asking for a worker who is fully vaccinated so this measure will provide more confidence in the sector and the organisations they access."
In recent weeks, the ACT government introduced vaccine mandates for teachers and some healthcare workers.
Ms Stephen-Smith said the ACT government did not have plans for more vaccine mandates at this stage, but would potentially look at mandatory vaccines for corrections officers.
"I don't think there's any other workforce that I can think of at this point in time that represents a high-risk setting where we would go down this path," she said.
"[Corrections is] probably the one ACT government sector where potentially this conversation might take place, but if that's the case there will be very significant consultation with staff about that."
The vaccine mandate for healthcare workers could also be broadened to include more work settings.
The government has been reluctant to mandate vaccines, with Chief Minister Andrew Barr repeatedly saying mandates were a "solution looking for a problem", given the ACT's high vaccination rate.
However, the government hopes the mandate will encourage the few workers in these sectors who have been reluctant to get vaccinated.
The ACT's Human Rights Commission has expressed concerns about vaccine mandates in the territory.
It has called for public health directions around mandates to be accompanied by detailed statements about their compatibility with human rights.
The commission said the mandate should be implemented through specific legislation.
