"As a result, both vaccine mandates were found by the court to be 'unlawful' and to have no effect.
Weighing in on the groundbreaking decision, Dr Coatsworth, Australia's former deputy chief health officer during the pandemic, said he had to acknowledge his own role in the system promoting vaccine mandates.
'We didn't get it wrong promoting the vaccines, but the mandates, yes, I think we did get that wrong,' he told The Today Show on Wednesday.
'And I think you can say hindsight is 20/20. But hindsight gives us foresight. And if we have another pandemic, we should think long and hard whether mandates for vaccines are justified.'
The infectious disease physician was the face of the vaccine rollout and was a common appearance on Australian televisions during the Covid outbreak.
Queensland 's Supreme Court this week found that police and ambulance workers in the state were given unlawful directions to get vaccines or face potential disciplinary action
He was appointed as one of three new deputy chief medical officers under Brendan Murphy at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
Dr Coatsworth said Commissioner Carroll 'didn't give any regard to the human rights implications' of the vaccine mandates.
He said the Supreme Court's decision could mean some of the workers sacked for not following the mandates could potentially get their jobs back.
'It could open the way for civil proceedings and damages against the governments with human rights acts, which are Queensland, the ACT and Victoria,' he said.
'But importantly, I think it opens all the decisions that we as senior health officials, as senior police and ambulance officials made.
'Did we have regard to Australians' human rights when we made those decisions and to what extent did we balance those decisions against human rights?'
The expert said in the event a pandemic was to occur again, authorities should rely on convincing people to get vaccinated rather than enforcing mandates.
'I think what we saw in New South Wales and Victoria was that you could get to high levels of vaccine coverage without the mandates, and that was because people were genuinely worried and they were prepared to be informed about these vaccines.
'That's the way to do it for the future.'"



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