A contentious legal requirement for frontline NHS workers in England to be fully vaccinated against COVID by 1 April, and to have their first jabs by Thursday (4 February), will be scrapped, reports BBC News. About 80,000 NHS frontline workers had faced dismissal for not being vaccinated.
The Royal College of Midwives, which welcomed the suspension of the policy, had warned it could have a “catastrophic impact” on maternity services, while the Royal College of GPs and Royal College of Nursing had called for the deadline to be delayed.
But, adds the BBC, the Department of Health and Social Care had previously insisted the policy was “the right thing to do to protect patients”.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid told MPs that ending the policy, which also affects social care staff, was now under consultation in light of the fast-spreading Omicron variant. Thousands of staff had faced redeployment or dismissal, prompting protests against the policy and some NHS workers considering moves to other UK nations.
The health secretary defended the policy of initially introducing mandatory COVID vaccinations for NHS and social care workers, insisting the government “makes no apology for it”. But he told MPs ministers would now launch a consultation due to “dramatic changes” in the virus since the original policy was devised last year.
“Subject to the responses and the will of this house, the government will revoke the regulations. I have always been clear that our rules must remain proportionate and balanced, and of course, should we see another dramatic change in the virus, it would be only responsible to review this policy again.”
There are no plans in Scotland and Wales to make COVID jabs mandatory for NHS workers or care home staff, while there will be a public consultation on the issue in Northern Ireland.
Since September there has been a “net increase of 127,000” people working across the NHS who have “done the right thing and got jabbed”, and a net increase of 32,000 people vaccinated in social care, Javid said.
The government has been under pressure from some within the health service to scrap the mandate, arguing that it would lead to a staffing crisis.
In a joint statement the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, representing trusts in England, said there was frustration at the 11th-hour policy change, given all the hard work on meeting the government deadline.
The groups also said there was concern at the implications for wider messaging to the public about the importance of vaccination.
The chief executives of the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, Matthew Taylor and Chris Hopson, said NHS leaders were “frustrated” at the 11th-hour policy change as they and their teams had raced to meet the 3 February deadline for first doses.
In a joint statement, they said they “recognised the reasons the government has given for the changes, the risk to services and the different risk from Omicron compared to previous variants”.
“But there would be concern at what this means for wider messaging about the importance of vaccination for the population as a whole.”
The pair also said the consultation would cause similar frustration for the care home sector “given the disruption to service delivery that resulted from loss of staff last November”.
Care home staff had to be double vaccinated by 11 November last year. Home care or domiciliary staff would have had to be double vaccinated at the same time as NHS staff.
From the start, care bosses have said that persuasion, not compulsion, was the most effective way to get hesitant staff to be vaccinated. Making vaccinations mandatory was an unnecessary headache, they argued, when the demand for care was rising and they were already losing staff exhausted by COVID and with better pay offered elsewhere.
Care homes had to sack staff unwilling to be jabbed last November, just before the intense pressures of the Omicron wave of the virus, adds the BBC.
With a similar deadline looming for those supporting people in the own homes, some care companies had feared they could lose 10% or more of their frontline care workers.
The Homecare Association, which represents providers of care in people's homes, said it was pleased there would be a consultation but urged immediate clarity, given the deadline for the first dose of the vaccine was Thursday and employers were poised to start dismissal procedures with unvaccinated staff.
In a letter to NHS trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups, NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard asked employers not to serve notice of termination to employees affected by the regulations.
BBC News article – Covid: Ministers plan to scrap NHS jab requirement for England (Open access)
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