The decree making the vaccine against Covid mandatory for workers in the United Kingdom’s public health system, the NHS, lit a red alert in several managers. With hospitals saturated due to high infections, they fear losing a considerable part of the workforce with employees who do not accept to receive the immunizer.
The scale of the problem becomes clearer as the date approaches when the rule goes into effect — April 1st. The King’s College Hospital in London alone, for example, could lose 1,000 staff who have not been vaccinated and do not intend to be vaccinated, Professor Clive Kay, head of the hospital, said in an interview with the BBC’s Sunday Morning program on Sunday. 9).
Kay said hospital management is working urgently to encourage staff to immunize themselves, so as to avoid losing staff as the capital sees a spike in new cases due to the highly contagious omicron variant. Of the 14,000 workers at the site, 10% have not yet completed the vaccination schedule.
The mandatory vaccination for health workers was announced by the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in December. Sajid Javid, secretary of health, said the move was justified because doctors and nurses have a responsibility to keep their patients safe and that he was giving 12 weeks so everyone could have time to take the two doses of the immunizer.
The rule also received the green light from the British Parliament later that month, by 385 votes in favor to 100 against, but it soon began to be questioned by unions in the area, who claimed fear of the professional exodus that it could provoke.
90% of NHS staff are projected to have received both doses of the vaccine, but a sizeable contingent of 103,000 workers have not. There are hospitals where only 80% of the staff has completed the vaccination course, says the government.
The situation has become a critical point due to the cascade effect observed: with the increase in cases, more and more employees get sick and are away from work, which further overloads hospitals.
The number of workers on leave from the NHS due to Covid grew by around 60% in the first week of January compared to the previous week, according to the Nursing Times magazine, and the government even called in the Armed Forces, which sent 200 soldiers to help the hospitals in the next three weeks.
The United Kingdom is one of the countries most affected by the onomicron and, since December, it has recorded consecutive records of new cases. The moving average of infections this Saturday (8) was 176,000 – the record was set days earlier, on Wednesday (5), with 182,000. The country has added 14.3 million cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
The number of deaths, although with a slight increase in recent weeks, does not register the same increase as the number of infections – something assured by the advance of immunization, according to experts. Still, the United Kingdom passed the 150,000-death mark from Covid on Saturday, becoming the seventh country in the world to do so, after the United States, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru.
When he visited King’s College Hospital last week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid was teased by one of those present. He questioned the employees about what they thought of the vaccine requirement, until a doctor contradicted the expectations of the answer: “I have not been vaccinated, nor do I want to be vaccinated”.
The official said he refuses to receive the immunizer because he believes he has natural immunity, since he already had the coronavirus, and asked the secretary to reconsider the vaccine requirement. Javid tries to ignore the comment and tosses the question to other people present, who don’t respond. He then simply says that he respects the opinion, but that the government is being advised by the best experts in the field. The scenes were recorded by the Sky News channel.
The UK has more than 18,000 patients hospitalized with Covid, with 868 of them requiring mechanical ventilation, according to government data. So far, 82.9% of the population over 12 years of age have received both doses of the vaccine, and 61.7% have already taken the booster dose.
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