All frontline NHS staff in England WILL need to be fully vaccinated against Covid by next spring 

All frontline NHS England workers will have to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus by next spring, the Government is expected to announce today.

Whitehall sources claim the deadline will be enough time for unvaccinated staff to get both doses of the jab – although there will be exemptions for medical reasons.

The flu vaccine will not be mandatory for staff, reported BBC News. Some 110,000 of 1.4million healthcare workers in NHS England have not yet had a first Covid vaccine.

The controversial requirement is likely to be enforced in April – and will follow a new rule insisting that all care home workers must be double-jabbed by Thursday.

But experts have pointed to the escalating workforce crisis in social care as evidence for why the Government should hold off making the jabs mandatory for NHS staff.

The upcoming announcement follows a consultation which began in September.

No similar proposals have yet been announced in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland for making Covid jabs mandatory for NHS staff or care home workers.

Chris Hobson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘There are two risks that we need to manage here.

‘The first risk is the one that’s very obvious which effectively is that if NHS staff have got Covid, and you’re not always able to tell that you’ve got Covid because it’s asymptomatic in some cases, then clearly there’s a risk of infecting other staff, infecting patients and infecting visitors – and that’s clearly something that we need to manage very carefully.

He added that double-vaccination ‘doesn’t completely eliminate the risk but obviously it provides a much greater protection.’

Mr Hobson continued: ‘The other risk we need to manage is the fact that there is also a patient safety and a quality of care risk if the NHS does end up, as a result of this, losing significant numbers of staff.

‘And that’s why we’ve said very clearly that we want the Government to work very closely with us to maximise the number of people who take up the vaccination voluntarily before the deadline to think very carefully about the deadline, because clearly we’re about to enter what we think is about to be the most difficult winter for the NHS on record.

‘And we also think it’s very important that the Government shouldn’t scapegoat or denigrate those NHS staff who currently haven’t been vaccinated, and all the evidence suggests that the work that trust leaders have been doing with staff over the last few months to persuade, encourage, to make the argument as to why vaccination is an important thing to do – we must ensure we get the tone of this announcement, if it is to come today, that needs to be done in a careful way.’

He also contested the figure of 110,000 for NHS England healthcare workers who have not been double-jabbed. While this is the most recent official figure, Mr Hobson said it was ‘probably slightly less than that because those figures are slightly old’ and said it was ‘somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000’.

He also said that if mandatory vaccination for NHS staff is approached in the right way it could actually result in a rise in take-up of jabs, saying ‘peer to peer’ conversations are important in groups where there is lower take-up.

He said: ‘If you look at other nations that have done this, there is no doubt that if you do it carefully, at the point when you announce the fact that you are going to have mandatory vaccinations in the sector, it does provide quite a useful opportunity to then have those kind of further conversations.

‘So if we get it right, actually, it could be quite a useful spur in some senses to drive the take-up up, but the bit that we just need to be careful of, as I said, is avoiding scapegoating people.’

Mr Hopson warned that the NHS and the social care sector losing ‘significant numbers of staff’ would be a ‘real problem’.

He said: ‘The problem for both social care and the NHS is we run these systems incredibly hot on very, very fine margins. Both of us have got around 90 to 100,000 vacancies.

‘We are completely reliant on our staff to currently provide you know, work extra shifts in order to do the work that needs to be done. So, you know, losing significant numbers of staff, particularly given the pressure that both of the systems are under at the moment, is a real, real problem. And that’s why we’re very clear with the Government they need to help us manage this risk.’

Mr Hopson also accepted that the risk of Covid infection in hospitals is ‘a problem’ but said the trusts have been working hard to minimise it.

He was asked about a report in The Telegraph newspaper which said more than 11,000 people have caught Covid and died after being admitted to NHS hospitals in England for other reasons.

Mr Hopson told the Today programme: ‘We know that the NHS, like every other health system in the world, has encountered this problem of nosocomial infection, in other words infection in healthcare settings.

‘And that’s precisely why we’ve been working so hard over the last 18 months to ensure that that infection risk is minimised. And that’s why, as I said, we can see the logic of introducing mandatory vaccination if it’s done in a careful and sensible way.

‘I do recognise NHS England’s view that actually it’s very difficult to put a precise number but we’ve known right from the beginning that this is a problem and that’s why trusts have been working so hard to try and minimise the levels of nosocomial infection, because they know it’s a very significant risk.’

It comes after former health secretary Matt Hancock said yesterday that mandatory jabs for nurses and doctors should be imposed ahead of a ‘difficult winter’.

Mr Hancock, who was responsible for making vaccines mandatory in the care sector, said compulsory vaccination should be ‘in place as fast as possible to save lives’.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he added: ‘There are some people who say this isn’t the way we do things in Britain.

‘But we already mandate vaccination against Hepatitis B for doctors. The British historic precedents for compulsory vaccination go back to the 1850s.’

However, health chiefs have warned that this would have devastating unintended consequences and lead to an exodus of hospital staff.

Professor Peter Openshaw, a scientist advising the Government, said he was against mandatory vaccination.

He told Times Radio: ‘I think the answer is to try to get as much information out as you can – to really try to talk to people on their own terms about why they might be uncertain about whether they should be vaccinated and only absolutely as a last resort should you make it a condition of employment.

‘But I do think that people should not be working in frontline jobs in contact with vulnerable patients unless they’ve been vaccinated.’

Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, Layla Moran MP, added: ‘It would be irresponsible to now implement a policy of mandatory Covid jabs given the unprecedented pressure facing the NHS heading into winter due to a lack of clear government policy.

‘Evidence heard by the APPG on Coronavirus made clear that to now introduce such requirements could further exacerbate staff shortages and risk pushing the NHS over the edge.

‘This policy is a sign that government has given up on tackling the root cause of sluggish uptake, and risks having devastating unintended consequences.’

It comes after Britain’s social care crisis deepened as it emerged that just 3,000 people replied to a major recruitment drive to tackle staff shortages.

Hundreds of care homes say they may have to close and evict residents amid a potential shortage of 170,000 staff.

The problem is being made much worse by the new rule insisting that everyone working in the sector must be double-jabbed by Thursday.

Around 60,000 unvaccinated social care staff in England are losing their jobs this week.

Among them is Louise Akester, 36, seen weeping in an online video after she was fired from Alderson House, an NHS care home in Hull.

Concerned about potential long-term side effects from the vaccine, she said: ‘This choice should be my basic human right. I genuinely love my job with all my heart.’

Even before the rule came in, homes were struggling to recruit enough staff and the sector is teetering on the verge of collapse as staff leave for better-paid jobs in supermarkets, retail or hospitality.

It is feared that as many as 500 care homes may have to close in the coming weeks, leaving thousands of vulnerable people in urgent need of new places.

Last week Health Secretary Sajid Javid launched a drive urging the public to apply for social care jobs.

But campaigners say only more sociable hours and better pay will fix such acute shortages.

They point to the failure of a similar campaign in February, which new figures show led to only 3,000 applications.

There are 105,000 social care vacancies in England and the National Care Association says this could rise to 170,000 by the end of the year.

Labour’s care spokesman Liz Kendall said: ‘In the face of over 100,000 vacancies, and with only 3,000 people even expressing an interest in working in care after their last campaign, it’s clear that a TV advertising campaign is totally inadequate to the scale of the task.

‘Hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people and their families deserve better.’