Downing Street appears likely to drop its policy of dismissing frontline NHS and care staff in England who refuse Covid vaccinations, a minister has strongly indicated, after nursing and care organisations called for this to happen.
A decision would be made “in the course of the next few days”, according to Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury. He said the lower severity of the Omicron variant of Covid did “open a space” for the policy to be reversed.
The apparent imminent U-turn came as the Royal College of Nursing argued that both the change in severity from Omicron and the number of NHS vacancies meant the mandatory vaccination policy should be dropped.
The National Care Association said it would also welcome a change of policy, while warning that many unvaccinated care staff had already lost their jobs in the run-up to the 1 April deadline.
Speaking in a TV clip on a visit to Essex, Boris Johnson also indicated a likely change, saying Sajid Javid, the health secretary, “is saying a bit more later on about how you might deal with different variants of coronavirus because they have different implications when it comes to transmission”.
The Guardian reported this month that an internal document drawn up by the Department of Health and Social Care said the growing evidence on the Omicron variant cast doubts over the new law’s “rationality” and “proportionality”.
Asked about reports of a change to the policy, Clarke told Sky News that ministers had hoped to find “the right balance between having the maximum impact for measures that support public safety in the face of the virus, but also have the minimum impact in terms of our wider freedoms as a society”.
He added: “And it’s in that context that a decision was made last autumn to make sure we went ahead with the mandatory vaccination policy, and that was because, obviously, we had the Delta variant, which was extremely dangerous, and was taking a huge toll on our society, and we had to make sure that people going into hospital, very vulnerable people, whether they had Covid or another condition which required treatment, weren’t going to be faced with an increased risk of infection on the wards.
“We continue to monitor that situation very, very closely. What we know about Omicron is that it is much, much more transmissible but less severe – any decision that is taken this week will reflect that reality.
“I can’t pre-judge the decision that is going to be made but obviously we do recognise those realities, and that does open a space where we can look at this again.”
Asked when health and care staff would know, Clarke said: “There will be a decision made in the course of the next few days, and that [the lower severity of Omicron] opens the window for us to look at it.”
Patricia Marquis, the director for England for the Royal College of Nursing, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We would say that Covid is still a serious disease and would absolutely urge all nursing staff to get vaccinated but the situation has changed in that Omicron is serious for those who are unvaccinated but actually overall as a country things have improved.
“But the most important issue for us right now is the fact that there are so many nursing vacancies already, it makes no sense to risk losing thousands of registered nurses and healthcare support workers from both health and also what’s been lost from social care.”
Nadra Ahmed, the chair of the National Care Association, told BBC Breakfast the sector had lost about 40,000 staff, and she was “saddened for all the people who may have lost their jobs needlessly” as a result of the vaccination policy.
