Politics

Doctors and nurses told get the Covid jab or risk your job



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octors and nurses will get a “substantial grace period” to get the Covid-19 jab or risk losing their job under Government plans, a minister has said.

Health minister Helen Whately added that health workers could be moved off the frontline if they refuse to get innoculated.

The Government took the first step towards mandatory Covid and flu jabs for frontline workers in health and care settings by launching a six-week consultation on the controversial move.

Ms Whately told Times Radio: “If we go forward…one of the things I would expect that we would do, just as we have done with care homes, is to give a substantial grace period to give people time to get vaccinated.”

While some NHS workers could be exempt on medical grounds from having the jab, others could lose their frontline jobs by not having it.

“You can look at whether there are alternative ways somebody could be deployed, for instance, in a role that doesn’t involve frontline work, or doesn’t involve being physically in the same setting as the patient, whether it’s, for instance, working on 111,” added Ms Whately.

Almost one in five London NHS healthcare staff are not double jabbed, according to the most recent NHS England data.

It showed that, by the end of August, 86 per cent of 201,915 permanent staff working for NHS trusts in the capital had received one dose and 80.7 per cent two doses, figures which partly reflect the lower take-up among BAME communities.

Launching the consultation, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: “Many patients being treated in hospitals and other clinical settings are most at risk of suffering serious consequences of Covid-19, and we must do what we can to protect them.”

Workers in care homes have already been told they will need to be double jabbed as a condition of deployment in England’s care homes by November 11, unless they are exempt.



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