Sun 03 October 2021:
UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid told care home workers they needed to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or find another job.
His warning comes ahead of the 11 November legal deadline for care home workers to have had both COVID-19 jabs, but some unions and care homes are warning that it could lead to a shortage of staff.
In an interview with the BBC’s Radio 4 on Saturday, Javid said he wasn’t prepared to “pause the requirement, adding that if you work in a care home and “cannot be bothered to go and get vaccinated, then get out and go and get another job.”
The UK has suffered more than 137,000 deaths from COVID, the most in Western Europe. The virus swept through care homes, with their elderly and often medically vulnerable residents, at the start of the pandemic.
The health secretary said that other people will come forward to replace those who leave the care sector as a result of the deadline, but Ms Ahmed warned that “the fact of the matter” is that “there is no workforce out there to replace the thousands that are leaving”.
Javid said: “If you think about elderly relatives you might have in care homes, and the idea that someone wants to look after them and they don’t want to take a perfectly safe and effective vaccine… because somehow they have got some objection to this vaccine, then really, honestly, they shouldn’t be in our care homes.”
The government has been easing COVID restrictions in recent months, counting on one of the world’s most successful vaccine programs to limit the impact of the virus.
Still, the spread of the delta variant has led infections to surge anew, with breakthrough cases rising, particularly among the most vulnerable.
Nadra Ahmed, chairman of the National Care Association, told the BBC that 86 percent of care home workers are now vaccinated, but without an extension to the government’s November deadline consequences on care would be severe.
“The situation is chronic now with staffing and that deadline will just add to it,” she told the BBC.
“This is not just an emerging crisis. With the scale of the existing vacancies, it’s a crisis that is already here. Care homes are already closing.
“It seems completely perverse that care home workers who are unvaccinated will be able to work on November 10 but not on November 11,” she added.
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