The clock is ticking for unvaccinated frontline NHS staff as the deadline on the Covid jab mandate looms.
By Thursday – unless there’s a last-minute reprieve – doctors, nurses and all NHS staff who come face to face with patients must have had their first dose or risk being out of a job. A second-dose deadline is fixed for April 1.
The Government policy has caused uproar, with thousands of staff taking part in protests last weekend to voice their outrage.
Senior health figures are divided. Some say it’s vital to protect vulnerable patients from catching Covid as they’re being treated; others argue the measure is already outdated – with most people fully vaccinated and the threat of the virus receding, they say the mandate is divisive and unnecessary.
But last week, The Mail on Sunday’s GP columnist Dr Ellie Cannon asked readers what they thought about it – and we’ve been inundated with responses overwhelmingly in support of ‘no jab, no job’.
‘Is it not the duty of NHS staff to honour their Hippocratic Oath of ‘first do no harm’ and get vaccinated?’ asked Eileen Watson, from Epsom.
David Brown, 68, a former sales manager from Surrey, wrote about his 92-year-old father George, who died after catching Covid while in hospital in January last year (pictured together)
Protestor seen chanting while holding a placard that says ‘no vaccine mandates’ during the demonstration in London earlier this month
Valerie Goodchild from Bangor wrote: ‘My husband has terminal stomach cancer and I do not want medical staff to give him Covid.’
And Ben Davis from Lincoln said: ‘My daughter takes immune-suppressing drugs. It should be the right of UK citizens to safely access NHS services.’
Some readers were especially concerned after seeing family members catch Covid in hospital.
This newspaper was the first to reveal that more than 4,000 patients died of Covid infections they picked up in hospital during the first wave in 2020.
David Brown, 68, a former sales manager from Surrey, wrote about his 92-year-old father George, who died after catching Covid while in hospital in January last year.
‘He was taken in for a fractured hip after suffering a fall, but was in good spirits,’ David said.
‘The doctors operated the next morning and he was recovering well. I don’t know how he became infected, but it could have been by an unvaccinated member of staff, given that we’d done everything we could to protect him.’
Five days after testing positive, George died in his sleep.
David said: ‘He ordered sausages and mash for his dinner, then nodded off and never woke up.
‘While patients are in the care of unjabbed doctors, I don’t think we can guarantee they’ll be treated safely.’
Meanwhile, healthcare leaders have warned of an ‘exodus’ of staff who simply refuse to have a jab at a time of immense pressure on the health service, meaning Ministers face some difficult decisions.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday’s Medical Minefield podcast, Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners Council, said: ‘We don’t believe the mandate is the best approach to improving the level of vaccination.
‘Decisions about medical interventions are best made through informed choice, and if people have doubts about it the best thing to do is to have conversations with them, not to force them into doing it.’
He added: ‘We can’t afford to reduce the size of the workforce in the healthcare sector. If you shut out people who are not willing to have a vaccination, that’s going to impact the care we’re able to offer to patients.
‘If you were to balance the risks of being looked after by a clinician who hasn’t been vaccinated against the risks of having no clinician at all, it seems to me to be a very easy and clear decision.’
And not all readers supported the NHS workers’ vaccine drive.
‘The inconvenient truth is that vaccines for Covid are not perfect,’ wrote Bernard Smith.
‘The virus can be passed on by the vaccinated, and many vaccinated people test positive for Covid and become ill.’
While Julie Poole wrote: ‘Covid is rife in my father-in-law’s care home, despite all the staff and residents there being fully jabbed. It’s so bad they’ve just had to put a ban on all visitors again.’
As the vaccine deadline looms, there are predictions that the NHS will be hit with swathes of legal claims brought by disgruntled employees forced to sacrifice their jobs.
‘This will come back to haunt the decision-makers when human rights lawyers take them to the cleaners for unfair dismissal,’ wrote MoS reader Julie Ball.
Only those members of staff who have ‘direct face-to-face contact with people receiving care’ will be subject to the mandate, and NHS bosses are advised to explore ‘reasonable possibilities for redeployment’ for those refusing to be vaccinated.
Some readers’ letters suggested that even those who did not have face-to-face contact with patients were being asked to abide by the mandate – such as those in research or administration. So, The Mail on Sunday sought clarification.
We asked the 219 NHS trusts in England if only patient-facing staff would be subject to the mandate, and whether they planned to redeploy unvaccinated staff.
As we went to press, more than 50 trusts confirmed both of these conditions. One, Royal United Hospitals Bath, said it may move staff to local ‘partner organisations’, away from the main hospital site.
Prof Marshall says: ‘It’s much less of a viable solution in general practice, with a fewer staff and less space elsewhere in the system. There is the provision of remote care over the telephone over video calls, but that is not a long-term solution.’
Additional reporting Justin Stoneman.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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