Sajid Javid said around 77,000 NHS workers remain unvaccinated in England against coronavirus and could face the sack.
The Health Secretary defended the Government’s policy of mandatory vaccination saying it is the “professional duty of every NHS worker to get vaccinated”.
However he admitted the policy which is being fiercely opposed by unions was being kept “sort of under review”.
All frontline workers in England will need to be double-jabbed by April 1 in order to keep their job, meaning the cut-off date for a first dose is February 4.
Around 40,000 are thought to have had one dose.
Bosses will dismiss unvaccinated staff that cannot be redeployed to a non-patient facing role.
Mr Javid told the Health and Social Care Committee: “Even before the mandate, the vast, vast majority had. Since the mandate, since we announced a consultation in September, we’ve had around 100,000 in the NHS that were unvaccinated at that point that have come forward. So there’s been a very good response.
“I think now it’s almost 95% of NHS workers that have had at least one jab. The latest numbers I have is that around 77,000 that have not.”
Mr Javid added: “I think it’s also reasonable to assume that not everyone ultimately is going to come forward.”
He highlighted to MPs that the original policy decision was made when Delta was the dominant variant in the UK.
He said: “That was the principle and we weighed it up. The dominant variant at the time was Delta, that was the dominant variant. The dominant variant now, in fact, almost all cases, are Omicron.”
He said people had “made representations” to him about Omicron being “very different” to Delta, in that while the former is more transmissible it is “intrinsically less severe”.
Mr Javid said while some people had urged him to add boosters to the mandatory requirement, others have called for it to be scrapped altogether.
He said: “I think it is right in light of Omicron that we reflect on all this and keep all Covid policies properly sort of under review.
“Because Omicron is different to Delta. Equally, we don’t know what the next variant is going to be. We talked a bit about that earlier. But we are reflecting on all this.”
There are more than 100,000 NHS staff vacancies in England.
Sajid Javid faced accusations of “wilful blindness” when it comes to how many staff the NHS needs to cater for the population.
The phrase was used by Peer and former NHS England head Sir Simon Stevens in the House of Lords this week and was repeated by committee chair Jeremy Hunt.
It related to the Government blocking an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill which would require independent assessments to be made of staffing need.
On staff shortages Mr Hunt asked whether the workforce budget for England had been set for 2022/23.
“It’s almost done, it’s not finalised at this point,” Mr Javid said.
Mr Hunt responded: “You understand why people are sceptical about nice words on workforce.”
Mr Javid said he will be setting out a plan by spring on how the Government thinks the country can “learn to live with Covid”.
He said treatments such as antivirals, and testing will be “top of the list”.
“We’ve got to find a way to live with it (Covid) in the same way, let’s say, we live with flu,” he said.
“I’m not for a second sort of saying it’s like flu, look at sadly all the deaths we’ve had from Covid - over 150,000 from the start.
“It’s about understanding we do now have defences which we didn’t have before and just as sort of flu doesn’t stop society and stop life, we mustn’t let Covid do that anymore.”
