Mandating vaccines for NHS workers is wrong

Trust will be eroded, concerns about the vaccine may worsen, and anti-vaccine attitudes could harden.

The UK Government will require, as of April 2022, those working on the front line for the NHS in England to have been vaccinated against Covid-19, subject to limited exemptions.

It is estimated that more than 100,000 employees have not yet had two doses. Legislation has already been introduced, effective this week, which requires workers in care homes to be vaccinated. Some European countries are implementing similar policies or are considering doing so. The American rules go further by targeting all federal employees for compulsory vaccination, so it seems entirely possible that mandates could grow in the future.

Voluntary take up seems to be exceptionally high in the NHS. Ninety per cent are ‘fully’ vaccinated and ninety-three per cent have had one dose (eighty-one per cent of the adult population are double jabbed by comparison). Naturally, NHS staff want to be protected from communicable diseases, and not be a risk to their patients.

The decisions taken by a minority to decline the offer of a vaccine are unlikely to have been taken lightly. It is doubtful that the Health Secretary’s announcement this week will have a positive impact on that population’s attitudes towards the menu of Covid-19 vaccinations. Trust will be eroded, concerns about the vaccine may worsen, and anti-vaccine attitudes could harden.

Some have argued, such as Matt Hancock, that this is simply an extension of pre-existing vaccine requirements for NHS staff, to now encompass Covid-19. Several vaccines are already recommended for healthcare workers- flu, BCG, varicella, MMR, hepatitis B are such examples. But it is a stretch to say there is a precedent for legal compulsion. Whilst some Hospital Trusts enact policies for health and safety in workplaces, which may include inoculation, this is not the law or the same thing as an explicit legal requirement which can be cited as a precedent.

The policy as it is proposed is novel and has implications for the human rights of NHS staff. The move violates the individual right to a private life (though this interference could still be justifiable under human rights law). The interests of medical professionals who do not wish to be vaccinated are on one side, and patients who may suffer if they are infected by an unvaccinated NHS staff member on the other.

Either way, procedures will now need to be put into place to deal with staff who, by the deadline, have not been vaccinated. In this context, it may be that redeployment, or cessation of duties will be considered. Doctors who have faced a gruelling two years come April and may have given decades of their lives to the NHS, will face losing their jobs. There are significant difficulties recruiting into the NHS and the care sector. It will put some people off entering NHS employment at all and increase discontent for many already working in the health service. Directly and indirectly, this will heighten the strain placed upon what are already limited resources trying to deal with a seemingly infinite demand.

This pandemic has been an incredibly complex issue that raises many ethical, legal, and practical questions. But, as a nation, vaccine levels and natural infection are now high enough for us to have reached herd immunity. The virus is transitioning into endemic stability whereby epidemic fluctuations are consigned to the past. We do not need to be wading into new authoritarian territory at this stage.