All frontline NHS to be double jabbed to keep a job

I cannot see this working out or being enforceable.
Yet again, the NHS becomes an even less attractive organisation to work for.

You’ve really not thought that through

Whys that then

Generalist, id have hoped it would be cheaper to test for antibodies than it would be to push through mandatory jabs, it would also mean boosters were only given when needed

As I say me and the mrs have antibodies after 19 months so who’s to say we’ll ever need a jab at all, surely jabbing who needs jabbing rather than trying to force it on everyone every 6 months is more cost effective and less wasteful

@firestarter – nobody knows yet what level of antibodies is required to confer immunity – your wife is generously being a guinea pig to find that out. Until then it could be a big mistake to say “well we can detect antibodies so don’t boost”. Then there is the fact that in the total cost of vaccination the dose of the vaccine is relatively cheap, the logistics probably cost as must as the liquid that goes in your arm. Now to test everyone we need to put in place a whole new lot of logistics that gets blood samples from people – sends them to a lab, and gets the results back to the right people to invite you for a booster. Add in that people are generally more squeamish about getting blood taken (and depending on the sample type required the training may be longer) that an intramuscular injection and I think its actually both cheaper and probably more effective to boost everyone. Long term – I’m sure the plan is not to just keep boosting everyone, every 6 months for life – there will be a point when either we have the data to know if you need it, and a simple enough home test for antibodies set at that cut off or we will have data that says 3 or 4 doses will last you X years, or 2 doses and natural exposure will be fine for those who don’t normally get flu vaccine etc.

Whys that then

logistics 101 – or if you need walking through the thought process Poly has put most of it down.

But its a totally bobbins idea at this stage.

Yet again, the NHS becomes an even less attractive organisation to work for.

I suppose it depends on your perspective? Im not convinced they should be making it mandatory BUT if I worked for NHS and wanted (a) to minimise the excess workload on me from colleague being off sick or self isolating with an avoidable condition (b) to minimise the risk to me from my colleague (c) to minimise the risk to my patients, I might actually see it as a positive thing that this helps me.

I suspect if you are bitterly opposed to the vaccine, NHS might not be somewhere you are that happy working anyway.

Some firms (but not hers) in Scotland are looking at the legals of enforcing in their t&cs if the Scottish government don’t follow the English.

I’d love to take that on as a union man

retrospective changes to employment contracts need the employees agreement

Sacking someone for refusing a vaccination when the requirement only came into being after they were employed would be automatically unfair dismissal

All medical treatment needs consent and consent under duress ( ie consent or lose your job) does not count as consent so anyone administering it under these circumstances could be in trouble and would be wise to refuse

All frontline NHS to be double jabbed to keep a job

Good, stop pandering to the ignorant.

I cant see it would be enforceable, but I can see the staff who refused would be transferred to another dept / role which is shit, and basically forced to leave or put up with it.

Plenty of batshit tin foilers in the NHS.

You’ll note that no-one is being compelled to have the vaccine, rather, it’s a condition of employment for working in certain places.

I don’t wanna say “end of thread”, but y’know.

Yet again, the NHS becomes an even less attractive organisation to work for.

My suspicion is that many NHS workers will be glad to see the back of any anti-vax dickhead colleagues, whatever they might say about personal choice in public.

Poly-convert there are already over 10k staff on the trials at the moment as soon as they are vaccinated this trial goes out the window. Also I’m tested monthly by the government it doesn’t appear to be that much of an issue , I send it in 48hrs later I have the results

My suspicion is that many NHS workers will be glad to see the back of any anti-vax dickhead colleagues, whatever they might say about personal choice in public.

Probably right – but also right thinking healthcare staff also believe in such things as ethics, consent, bodily autonomy and so on

If all healthcare workers how about all hospitality workers? How about police? all at risk of spreading it at a similar rate

this seems to me to be very much one of those cases where its OK to force in defiance of centuries of law to one group of workers but not to others – with no logic behind it

Vs my wife DEFINITELY has antibodies and tested for them monthly and is PCR tested every 2 weeks and DEFINITELY isn’t carrying covid

You don’t know that, at all. As above, it sounds like your wife is helping with an important research question (which, by definition, means we don’t know what effect having the antibodies has), but you’re leaping to conclusions.

Your particular situation is very rare, though, so it’s hardly relevant to the wider discussion, whereas your unfounded vaccine skepticism is unfortunately widespread. Make no mistake, there’s an information war going on in this country and people are preying on the encourageable and easily lead.

what’s the uptake level in NHS? and in care home staff? Surely the former is well into the 90’s?

I saw some stat for this recently. For acute trusts in England, the score for each trust was between 79 and 94% IIRC.

far too much crap being spouted by people who only have limited facts in this whole situation

Quite.

Not sure if its been mentioned yet but if i were involved i would make sure this covered all of the trainees currently working towards their qualifications. Imagine all those student nurses coming to the end of their training and then deciding they dont want the vacs.

TBH i see the NHS staff calling the governments bluff on this just like the carehome staff. I cant see them being able to force people to Vaccinate but if they do go ahead with it, they need to make sure future nurses are on the same page too

You cannot force vaccinations – it goes against centuries of law and ethics. It could be made a requirement of having the job but cannot be made retrospective

In terms of staff shortages I expect overseas recruitment to increase. Its all my wife seems to talk about these days.

What this does to the nursing situation in the countries we are recruiting from I have no idea but can’t believe it helps!

What this does to the nursing situation in the countries we are recruiting from I have no idea but can’t believe it helps!

recruiting from non eu countries is a disaster

One of the carribean islands had to close its only ITU because the majority of its staff were poached for the NHS

Big surplus of Spanish and Polish nurses but of course brexit!

Poly-convert there are already over 10k staff on the trials at the moment as soon as they are vaccinated this trial goes out the window.

@firestarter – absolutely which as I said earlier is why there will almost certainly be an exemption for people on certain sanctioned trials (at least until the end of the trial)

Also I’m tested monthly by the government it doesn’t appear to be that much of an issue, I send it in 48hrs later I have the results

But:
1. You presumably volunteered for the trial so have a higher than typical level of motivation to actually keep going.
2. Presumably you knew what was required before you signed up? So you signed up because you weren’t excessively scared of needles / taking own blood or whatever the study requires?
3. Do you know what the compliance rate is for people actually collecting and sending back samples? My guess is they’ll be delighted if 60-70% of people report enough to get them useful data – even in your study there will be a small % who do something wrong with the samples and need contacts / follow up. With the general public that % would be bigger but even if it was just 1% of the adult population who do something wrong in registering for or submitting a sample that’s 500K phone calls sort it out.
4. Do you know what that study is costing? to generate 10000 data points a month? why did they stop at 10K (or whatever the number is? I bet they had more volunteers – but did they have the lab capacity? I’d bet its keeping a lab occupied full time just processing those samples – where would they get the equipment or people to run another say 1000 of those labs to test everyone over 3 or 4 months.
5. The AZ vaccine is <$6 per dose as I understand it. Pfizer is <$20. How much does a blood test cost? Probably more than AZ – and if its a self collected sample that gets posted to you and posted back you are probably not far off Pfizer costs!

That’s all before you pay for the booking systems, advertising campaign to explain to the thick-as-mince public, etc. OR we could just give everyone a booster, which the data seems to suggest is probably a really good idea anyway and likely to be needed for many people even if you did do antibody tests and knew how to interpret the results.

Sacking someone for refusing a vaccination when the requirement only came into being after they were employed would be automatically unfair dismissal

There’s an easy way to solve that, change the law.

And as the Govt is the employer, and they’ve an 80 seat majority, they can pretty much enact any law they fancy.

Vs my wife DEFINITELY has antibodies and tested for them monthly and is PCR tested every 2 weeks and DEFINITELY isn’t carrying covid

Then all you DEFINITELY know is that she wasn’t “carrying covid” two weeks ago, an infection with an asymptomatic gestation of about two weeks. Regardless of how many RANDOM CAPITALS you choose to use.

Also, one does not “carry covid.” Covid19 is a disease resulting from a virus, specifically SARS-Coronavirus-2. If you don’t know the difference then you probably shouldn’t be lording it on the Internet.

Lives are at stake. Normality is at stake. If you / she isn’t vaccinated, for the love of Pete stop thinking you’re special and sort it out.

Sacking someone for refusing a vaccination when the requirement only came into being after they were employed would be automatically unfair dismissal

Only an employment tribunal can actually determine that. I think there’s a chance (but not a certainty) that an ET would agree with you, but I think there’s also a possibility that with a well-constructed process an ET could agree that it was a fair and reasonable health and safety policy for other staff and service users, especially if the steps are not immediate dismissal but alternative work etc first.

From a GP practice perspective we’re regulated under the CQC (here reg. 12 applies) and there are some immunizations that we must demonstrate that ALL our staff have. (they are mostly the routine vaccinations that you’d receive through childhood MMR dip, polio, tetanus) however if you regularly take blood, deal with sharps, or are at risk from pts (being bitten etc) then they MUST have HepB, BCG, varicella as well.

Must in most regulatory language is a requirement rather than advisory, and we act accordingly.

I’d expect most staff would be already vaccinated against COVID and I’d suspect that you’d be moved from any position that would make you or others vulnerable if you choose not to have it before sacking. I know of just one person (a med sec) that’s refused.

Cougar yes I do know all that it seemed a simple way to put it as for lording it over the net that’d your job isn’t it, plum

Alternative work is fine but as an ex union man i would love fighting that because its such an obvious case if its get vaccinated or be sacked

There’s an easy way to solve that, change the law.

Not as easy as that – you have medical ethics to deal with, compulsory vaccination is against the human rights stuff. all sorts of shizzle. No healthcare worker should give a vaccination when the person being vaccinated is under duress. basic healthcare stuff

this seems obvious on the surface but then you look into it or know a bit more then actually its a legal and ethical minefield

Should all hospitality workers and shop workers be compulsory vaccinated? How about transport staff? Police?

All fair points poly, I am in fact booked in for my jab in a couple of weeks and my 2nd is booked for Feb but it doesn’t make it right what the government are doing at all

nickc – I suggest you look at that a bit more because that goes very much against medical ethics – my guess is vaccinated OR alternative arrangements which is what I did to avoid the hep and rubella vaccines ( In my case alternative arrangements were simply to sign a waiver absolving the NHS from responsibility if i got anything)

I think its important to separate the vaccinations to protect the worker – Hep and those to protect the patient – covid

Edit – I would have had Hep and Rubella if I worked in a gps surgery. Be daft not to

Should all hospitality workers and shop workers be compulsory vaccinated? How about transport staff? Police?

Can those of you that are so keen to forcibly vaccinate healthcare staff against all law and ethics please answer this

As ever with Covid other countries have already done a lot of this and we’re just catching up, obviously our legalities and contracts aren’t the same as other countries but most of the other issues are.

Big headlines are re staff loss, and who you actually lose. Surveys have found that as many as 72% of unvaccinated staff say they will quit if a mandate is brought in. Reality shows that even in very anti-vax industries and divided countries, it’s almost never over 5%. That’s 5% of unvaccinated staff, not 5% total.

When New South Wales health department introduced their mandate, 7% of staff were unvaccinated and those opposing the ban all said that it’d be a disaster. .1% quit. The BBC reported that “thousands of Chicago police officers may not turn up for work”, so far it’s 21.

Yes the NHS has major staff issues, possibly more so than a lot of the organisations I mention above, but this will be a drop in the bucket. And if we’re going to act on staff levels this isn’t the thing that you’d act on, it’d be staff safety, quality of working life, not having government actively try and kill you, not having health secretaries attack the service you provide and blame you for their failures. Work on a huge scale’s desperately needed to fix the NHS demographic timebomb, it’s not happening, and very few of the people who’ll loudly say that vaccines will drive too many people out of the NHS are saying anything about that.

And of course, vaccines aren’t the only thing that take people out of the job. 21 Chicago police officers quit, more than that have died of covid. If the NHS follows the typical track the cost of resignations in FTEs will probably be less than the cost of the disease.

The other thing is who quits. If my doctor is an anti-vaxxer I don’t want him as my doctor, no more than I want a doctor who believes in the healing power of crystals or that antidepressants are all a big con by Big Pharma. If it’s about personal choice then I do feel a bit different but mostly this isn’t “I think the vaccine is fine but I shouldn’t be forced to have it”, because at this point people who haven’t had the vaccine mostly don’t believe it’s fine.

(the correlation between people quitting over vaccine mandates and people with existing bad records is astonishing- in some US police forces over half of all people quitting because of the vaccine had a prior record of violence against the public. If you’ve got a record of turning off your body camera, chances are you’re anti-vax)

Of course none of this touches on the morality of compulsion at all, or the legality in the UK. Above my pay grade, those two 🙂

nickc – I suggest you look at that a bit more because that goes very much against medical ethics

That’s pretty much verbatim from the “mythbuster” page of the CQC site. When they inspect us part of that is an HR check and they would expect to see evidence of immunisations,  I don’t really care overmuch about the ethics of it all, I know that I’d be rated down for not having that information.

REG 12 CQC all practice must ensure that their staff are appropriately vaccinated 

I find it a little strange that such regulations are being considered, (and so late in the game, too. Next spring is a lifetime away, when you consider all that could happen between now and then), while news outlets are simultaneously publishing articles with the idea that the unvaccinated cannot rely on a herd-like protection effect that might come from so many being vaccinated against Covid (and thus should go and get jabbed to protect themselves).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59077036

It also does not play well with the very high numbers of asymptomatic cases. Surely a vaccinated person has a higher chance of being asymptomatic if they do still catch Covid, and thus spread it without knowing it?

I do wonder if there’s politics involved in that timing. This winter could be very, very bad for the NHS and I’m sure Sajid Javid would be very happy to have stories about NHS staff refusing vaccines, threatening legal action or quitting the profession in protest to shift blame and distract attention.

Personally- I am not in the medical profession- I think mandatory vaccines is a good thing. But just because my uninformed kneejerk opinion is in favour doesn’t mean I don’t think the government may be doing it for **** reasons.

Interesting seeing the debate on here.

Personally, my view is that unless there is a medical reason not to have the vaccine (including being involved in trials) then only a fool wouldn’t have it, and I don’t want fools in a position of caring for me and my loved ones. And I’ll extend that view to the wider population.

Whether it’s acceptable to then force people in a desperately understaffed area of care out of their jobs, I’m not sure how I feel.

I’ve had all the recommended jabs to get me to 52 years of age, and my kids have had all their recommended jabs. Despite my daughter having a rough week after her Covid jab, including a trip to be checked out, I’ll continue to trust the judgement of competent health experts who say the jabs are safe enough over, well, anyone else.

Talking to my customers, the main resistance is apparently that the majority of NHS staff understand the argument that the vaccine is still in trial phase until 2023 and with that brings a degree of unknown risk that they don’t feel prepared to take.

YOu’d think though that they would see the benefits or the potential consequences of not, but for whatever reason people seem to be for it or against it. If ever i try and discuss this it ALWAYS gets heated for some reason…a very tetchy subject.

Speaking as an uninformed husband of an (often Covid designated) ward manager, and hearing her stories of the countless people she speaks to…I would love to see how anyone could arrive at this:

that the majority of NHS staff understand the argument that the vaccine is still in trial phase until 2023

Where is the line?

Clearly drawn and signposted along the lines of “Don’t **** over more vulnerable members of society”.

Can those of you that are so keen to forcibly vaccinate healthcare staff against all law and ethics please answer this

As someone who’s had to get vaccinated in the past to be able to work in certain countries, I’ve no problem with that either.

That’s pretty much verbatim from the “mythbuster” page of the CQC site. When they inspect us part of that is an HR check and they would expect to see evidence of immunisations, I don’t really care overmuch about the ethics of it all, I know that I’d be rated down for not having that information.

REG 12 CQC all practice must ensure that their staff are appropriately vaccinated

That seems to suggest that employers must have a vaccination program in place, and logs, and risk assessments. According to the linked article, individuals should be vaccinated. It doesn’t say what happens when /if they refuse.

Surely a vaccinated person has a higher chance of being asymptomatic if they do still catch Covid, and thus spread it without knowing it?

Possibly, I’m not sure if that’s been shown. But what has been shown is that viral loads and transmissibility are lower among the vaccinated. So the two factors might well balance. I certainly wouldn’t assume I knew the answer to your question (one way or another) without some evidence to back it up. That notwithstanding, a lot of employers are doing biweekly LFTs to help identify those asymptomatic people anyway.

the correlation between people quitting over vaccine mandates and people with existing bad records is astonishing

This is an interesting point too. At a guess I suspect unvaccinated staff are more likely to need time off. With a vaccine mandate, they won’t be losing the best / brightest staff 🙂

EDIT:

that the majority of NHS staff understand the argument that the vaccine is still in trial phase until 2023

I work in the NHS and I don’t know a single person that has voiced that concern. Worryingly your post uses that awful Trump tactic that seems to be quite effective in order to give credence to their lies. “A lot of people are saying <something that no one is saying>.” It makes my skin crawl.

I don’t get this. Don’t nurses have a basic understanding of medical history and the unbelievable efficacy of vaccinations across time?

I mean its undeniable. Its like working for NASA and being a flat earther

It’s not as clear cut as that.

RNs will have more than just a ‘basic’ understanding of vaccines and their history etc. That might also be the problem. One of my Wife’s colleagues for example, doesn’t have a flu vaccine every year. When it comes to Covid, She’s had both jabs and her booster, but she thinks that if she’d already had Covid, then she probably wouldn’t had the vaccine. It’s her belief that contracting, and recovering from Covid offers the same benefits of the vaccine, without the tiny risks. It’s a view shared by the F1 Medical car drivers, who recently got into trouble because, having both contracted Covid, didn’t have the vaccine, because in their home country, it’s not policy.

Also, whilst most of us have forgotten about it, back in 2009 another vaccine was given to NHS Staff to try to prevent a serious Pandemic, Swine Flu. Pandemrix wasn’t given the same, fast, but thorough as the Covid vaccines, but NHS staff were put under a lot of pressure to have it, to the point when Nurses and Doctors were lined up in corridors and told they had to. In the US it was Anthony Fauci, the US voice of Covid common sense who championed Pandemrix.

Unfortunately, Pandemrix caused narcolepsy in a tiny number of people, this wasn’t picked up in trials, because there really wasn’t any.

It’s whole different thing to the Covid vaccine, but most Medics who’ve been around since 2009 remember it, even if the public have forgotten.

It doesn’t say what happens when /if they refuse.

In my practice they wouldn’t last out their probationary period. Regs 18 (staffing) and 19 (fit and proper persons) apply here, which is to with employing suitable people for the role. If the regulations say we should be able to demonstrate that we’re employing people who can show that they’re fit to do the role, then the counter to that is an obvious one.

As most folks are employed before the COVID vaccine existed, I’d expect clinicians to take the advice of their appropriate regulatory body, or have a compellingly good reason why not. Pregnancy was the only one I can think of, but the advice has changed recently. And for admin and reception staff I’d make some adjustments according to their role. For staff who don’t interact with patients, I don’t think I’d necessarily sack them straight away for not being vaccinated from COVID, as I can isolate them in my practice and/or make them work from home.

But what has been shown is that viral loads and transmissibility are lower among the vaccinated.

Not according to a recent Oxford / ONS study, which focussed on how the Delta variant affects things:

With Delta, infections occurring following two vaccinations had similar
peak viral burden to those in unvaccinated individuals

https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/files/coronavirus/covid-19-infection-survey/finalfinalcombinedve20210816.pdf

Genuine Question for you all. Would you rather be treated by a highly skilled, highly dedicated, highly experienced nurse who is unvaccinated but has Covid antibodies in their system, and therefore no different to a vaccinated nurse, or a fully vaccinated but green as hell nurse straight out of training? Which would you prefer to see treating your family members?