Trade union leaders urged ministers on Friday (Jan. 7) to delay making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for National Health Service (NHS) staff because the feared exodus will worsen the health service’s staffing crisis.
The government has decided that all NHS personnel in England who have direct contact with patients must have had their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by February 3 or risk losing their job at the end of March.
But the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called for the policy to be delayed “with immediate effect,” to avoid the loss of staff it will create deepening the health service-wide shortage of key workers, which is why dozens of NHS trusts have had to declare a major alert over the last week.
The TUC is warning health secretary Sajid Javid that pressing ahead with the plan “will exacerbate this crisis, creating a bureaucratic and staffing nightmare for NHS trusts and making it impossible to maintain safe staffing levels in the coming weeks.”