No Jab, No play now in effect at ECEC settings across South Australia

As a number of parents return to work after a break for the festive season, South Australian Minister for Health and Wellbeing Stephen Wade has issued a reminder to ensure young children are vaccinated, with the No Jab, No Play law now in effect at early childhood education and care (ECEC) services across the state.

Mr Wade said parents are required to provide approved immunisation records to their childcare service provider as part of efforts to prevent and control outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases.

Ensuring children are fully immunised will “help prevent the heartbreak of seeing their child sick, or worse, from a potentially preventable disease” as well as protecting the health and wellbeing of young South Australians, Mr Wade said.

Parents are required to provide approved immunisation records to childcare centres, family day care, pre-schools, kindergartens and early learning centres upon enrolment, and at other specific ages throughout the child’s attendance at the service.

Early childhood services are also required to keep a copy of all approved immunisation records for the duration a child is enrolled in their service.

These changes will enable the Chief Public Health Officer Associate Professor Nicola Spurrier to have to hand the immunisation records she needs to protect susceptible children from early childhood services in the event of any type of vaccine preventable outbreak, Mr Wade said.

Ms Spurrier noted the importance of vaccination not only to those children who are “very vulnerable to vaccine preventable disease” but also to vulnerable people in the community who are too young or too unwell to be vaccinated. 

Immunisation generally takes between two and four weeks to be effective, depending on the vaccine and whether it’s a booster. In most cases, an approved immunisation record is a child’s immunisation history statement from the Australian Immunisation Register.

The measure was officially introduced on 1 January 2020. More information is available here.