Covid vaccine mandate that forced care homes to sack 40,000 unjabbed workers will finally be ditched in a fortnight — but will they want to come back?
- 90 per cent say they supported the move to ditch the ‘no jab, no job’ policy
- The Department of Health says the change will be brought in on March 15
- 40,000 care home workers have already lost their job because of the rule
The ‘no jab, no job’ rule in care homes is being revoked in a fortnight, the Government revealed today.
Nearly 40,000 unvaccinated staff lost their jobs in in England in November when the controversial policy came into effect.
No10 announced its intentioned to remove the mandate last month pending a consultation after admitting that Omicron was milder and makes jabs significant weaker at preventing transmission.
The consultation, published today, found 90 per cent of respondents supported revoking the policy, which was originally also due to be brought into the NHS too.
Officials said the rule will be dropped in care homes on March 15, but care bosses slammed the Government for being ‘too late’.
Tory MPs have called on the Government to bring those who lost their jobs in the care sector back into the fold to help deal with a current staffing crisis in the sector.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the decision was made because of the Omicron variant, which is ‘intrinsically less severe’ and is much better at infecting vaccinated people.
Rules requiring all care home workers to have a Covid vaccine will finally be revoked in a fortnight, the Government revealed today. Graph shows: Just 51.7 per cent of care home staff in England had received a booster third dose by February 20
A DHSC spokesperson said: ‘We fully recognise the calls for clarity and for quick revocation of the regulations.
‘The regulations will come into force on March 15 in order to provide certainty for employers, their staff, patients and people who receive care or support.’
The consultation surveyed 90,000 health and social care professionals and members of the public from February 9 to 16.
Eighty-seven per cent of respondents said they ‘strongly’ agree the policy should be revoked, with a further 3 per cent also preferring the rule is abandoned.
Some 96 per cent of members of the public said they supported the move to get rid of the policy.
But 7 per cent said they strongly opposed the move, with 2 per cent also not wanting to see the change brought in.
Some 30 per cent of NHS and care home managers said they opposed the rule being revoked.
But DHSC said the overall responses ‘showed clearly the strength of feeling about the policy, both through the large number of total responses received and the clear preferences indicated’.
Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, told MailOnline: ‘The decision to remove vaccination as a condition of employment for residential care staff comes too late for the over 30,000 people who left our services because they did not want to be vaccinated.
‘The Government talks endlessly about integrating health and social care, and yet they put this mandate into social care, but not into the NHS.
‘In future, anything they do needs to be implemented system-wide because fragmented decision-making has unintended consequences.’
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