Some small business owners are concerned about a potential spread of coronavirus as the ACT opens up, with tattoo artists among those anxious.
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Staff of Sisters Inked and Freestyle Tattoo Studio have decided not to return to work this week unless they were double vaccinated. They say without proof of vaccine requirements in the ACT, the concern was clients would not do the same.
Studio manager Melissa Bottega said many of their young workforce felt pressure to return as government support was coming to an end.
"We've all had a lot of conversations around, 'Do I come back sooner than I feel comfortable coming back because I need to get paid or not'?" Ms Bottega said.
"It feels like we haven't been given a lot of a choice with that, we've just kind of had to go back to work."
COVID support for employees will be reduced the week after the ACT reaches 80 per cent vaccination coverage and will end two weeks after that milestone.
Almost 80 per cent of the ACT population aged 16 and over had received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine on Sunday.
Ms Bottega said the business would love to stay closed for another month until vaccination coverage was anticipated to be more widespread.
"Tattooing can't be done without being in close contact with people," Ms Bottega said.
"While we can guarantee that we're all vaccinated and as a tattoo business we are super clean.
"But we don't have the right to even ask clients if they have or have not been vaccinated, we're relying on our clients to maintain our safety."
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said 99 per cent of eligible ACT residents aged 12 and over would be double vaccinated by the end of November.
This will coincide with the final phase in the territory's four-stage roadmap out of lockdown, with density requirements reduced to one person per two square metres to be considered, alongside the reopening of food courts and nightclubs and less restrictions on interstate and overseas travel.
From Friday, tattoo studios, alongside hairdressers, beauty salons and other personal services, were permitted to open to a maximum of five customers at a time.
The rules have changed from last year's reopening, which allowed businesses to have one client per four square metres.
Ms Bottega said with two months' worth of tattoo appointments to rebook they would struggle to take new clients for some time.
"Last year when we reopened we had almost all of our artists working, so there would have been 12 people tattooing from 10am," she said.
"Whereas I had two people in Sisters tattooing their bookings on Friday because they're the only two whose vaccination efficacy kicks in on time."
University of Canberra professor of economics Phil Lewis said while businesses like tattoo parlours would consider themselves particularly vulnerable given the nature of their work, there was a more general problem facing businesses in the service sector, including cafes, restaurants, pubs and retail.
"Not only are there risks to health of staff by being in contact with unvaccinated customers but also financial risk to businesses already struggling to survive," Prof Lewis said.
"If someone becomes infected it would inevitably mean the closure of the business, even if only temporarily, with loss of revenue while many costs still have to be paid.
"Retail sector service businesses run on very small profit margins even in good times, so the effects of COVID shutdowns would be crippling for many businesses."
Prof Lewis said while most businesses would have been eager to open after a long lockdown, if coronavirus was to spread through customer or staff contacts the businesses would suffer from reputational loss.
"Another factor is the reluctance of customers to put themselves at risk by entering environments where unvaccinated people could spread disease.
"Businesses that cannot exclude the unvaccinated are likely to lose business from the vaccinated."
Prof Lewis said vaccine passports could help solve that problem by providing information to both staff and customers about the safety of a business.
He said while there could be an issue when it came to enforcement he didn't expect non-compliance to be a major problem in the ACT.
"I think this is unlikely to be widespread in Canberra given the strong compliance observed to date with COVID restrictions and the high degree of willingness to get vaccinated," Prof Lewis said.
"I think most people would think it reasonable, given the extent to which the vast majority have gone to the effort to get vaccinated, that those who haven't should not put the rest at risk."
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