Unvaccinated workers at diary giant Fonterra will be able to continue working at the company, if they undergo daily Covid19 testing.

The company was going to require all workers to be vaccinated by 1 April – but it’s changed its mind.

A Fonterra spokeswoman told Chris Lynch “as we understand more about the latest dominant variant, Omicron, we have adapted our approach to those employees who remain unvaccinated on 1 April 2022.”

“This means that as a reasonable alternative to termination of employment, unvaccinated employees can now commit to a daily testing programme.”

The spokeswoman said “we currently consider participating in a daily testing programme to be reasonable during this phase of the pandemic while Omicron is the dominant variant.”

“We have made this decision by taking on board the latest health advice, understanding the risk Omicron poses, the vaccination levels within our New Zealand workforce, and the wide availability of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs).”

“While this is our current position, the emergence of new variants and new information is likely to trigger further reviews of our vaccine requirements and that could mean new measures for those employees who choose to remain unvaccinated.”

“Throughout the pandemic, we’ve adapted our response to COVID-19 as the situation changes.”

“We have high rates of vaccination among our New Zealand workforce and this, along with other control measures, has meant we’ve been able to keep our people and operations as safe as possible over the last two years.”