UK’s Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, has confirmed that mandatory Covid jabs for health and social care workers in England will be scrapped on 15 March, noting that
staff will no longer be required by law to get vaccinated.
The rules came into force for care home staff in November, and had been due to be introduced for frontline NHS and wider social care staff in regulated settings from 1 April.
The rules came into force for care home staff in November, and had been due to be introduced for frontline NHS and wider social care staff in regulated settings from 1 April.
The policy met fierce resistance from some workers, with warnings that sacking those who did not comply would worsen the already serious staffing crisis engulfing health and care services. Several MPs had also criticised the decision.
Javid, said earlier this year that he believed it was “no longer proportionate” to require vaccination as a condition of deployment under law.
On Tuesday he confirmed the regulations in health and social care would be revoked, and said the rules would end on 15 March.
The development immediately raised the question of whether care workers who may have left their jobs could return.
Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, said Javid’s announcement had come too late to repair the “huge” damage done to the care sector.
“Staff have already left residential care services and found new jobs in the NHS and home care,” he told the Guardian. “I seriously doubt we are going to see lots of them coming back.”
Javid said that when the original decision was taken to make it a legal requirement, Delta was the dominant variant of the virus but that had since been replaced by the less severe Omicron.
However, he added that despite the change, he still considers it “a professional responsibility for health and care staff, and others who work in the health and social care sectors, to be vaccinated”.
The government said 90% of responses to a public consultation launched last month supported the removal of the legal requirement. The consultation received more than 90,000 responses from across the health and social care sector, as well as from members of the public, Javid told MPs.
He said 92% of the NHS workforce and 95% of care home staff had received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 89% of home or domiciliary care staff had so far taken at least one dose.
He added that the government was “committed to working with the health and social care sectors to engage with those who are yet to make the positive choice to be vaccinated”.
The decision was welcomed by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), while Unison said many staff who left care homes due to the requirement were unlikely to return to their jobs.
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