Johannesburg – Following growing calls for employers to take steps to make workspaces safer in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, Discovery is one of the first companies to make vaccinations mandatory for staff.
Discovery employees will have to be vaccinated from next year. it is the latest major international company to restrict the movement of those who choose not to get the jab.
However, the company acknowledges that some people are likely to object to the policy due to health and religious concerns.
Public health law expert, Safura Abdool-Karim, said that employers must make a determination on each individual’s case. Karim said that they would not be able to force compliance with the policy if someone had a legitimate reason not to get jabbed.
“You aren’t a binary. It’s not everybody or nobody must be, there is a level of nuance. Some people can not take a vaccine for health reasons, other don’t want to for religious or cultural belief. We each have a sliding scale and I think that’s what’s really important about the policy, that’s the level of nuance that a lot of employers need to think of when adopting their own policies.”
