“If we have unvaccinated health workers and the virus spreads through our hospitals,which it absolutely will,then we don’t have a workforce,” Ms D’Ath said.

“We saw it with the Indooroopilly cluster when we saw health workers go into isolation for 14 days - we cannot afford to have large volumes of our health workers off sick … we need a workforce that is protected as they can be.”

Ms D’Ath said the vaccine mandate was supported by the health workers unions,and Queensland Health Director-General John Wakefield was working through compliance issues with staff.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young played down the significance of the staff refusing the vaccine,saying overall compliance was high.

“We’ll work that through,it’s a very small percentage[of health workers],” she said.

The deadline for the vaccine mandate this Monday coincides with the date Dr Young will stand down from her role leading the pandemic response to be sworn in as the next Governor of Queensland.

About 200 Queensland police officers have taken their fight against mandated vaccination to court.

The officers claim they were not given enough consultation and should not be forced to have a vaccine they do not want.

In response,Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll has argued that,like the health system,the Queensland Police Service has to avoid large numbers of officers being forced to the sidelines because of infections.

The number of employees resisting the mandates is comparatively about the same between police and health workers.

Two-thousand workers is about 2 per cent of the 100,000 employees of Queensland Health,while 200 officers is about 1.7 per cent of the service’s 17,000 employees.

Across the state,75.68 per cent of eligible people have had one dose of a COVID vaccine and 61.22 per cent are double-dosed,with 13,603 doses administered by Queensland Health on Tuesday.