{"id":684,"date":"2021-08-12T08:29:19","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T08:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/?p=684"},"modified":"2021-08-12T08:29:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T08:29:19","slug":"vaccinating-healthcare-workers-against-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2021\/08\/12\/vaccinating-healthcare-workers-against-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccinating healthcare workers against Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an article published in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/374\/bmj.n1975\">British Medical Journal<\/a>, we discuss the topic of vaccinating healthcare workers against Covid-19. Our conclusion is that compulsion is unnecessary and inappropriate.<\/p>\n<p>Parliament\u2019s decision to make vaccination against covid-19 a condition of employment for care home workers has fuelled the debate around compulsory vaccination for healthcare workers, which may follow. Compulsory vaccination is not a panacea and may harm the safety of patients and healthcare workers, as well as affecting workload and wellbeing. It is a dilemma familiar to occupational health services in many NHS trusts.<\/p>\n<p>Is there a vaccine hesitancy problem in UK healthcare for which mandatory vaccination is an appropriate solution? Data suggesting pockets of poor uptake of covid-19 vaccination among care home staff led the government to make vaccination compulsory, abandoning a targeted but voluntary approach. The government\u2019s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has not published a recommended minimum acceptable level of staff vaccination for healthcare settings, but over 80% of frontline healthcare workers in NHS trusts have now received two vaccine doses,4 reaching over 90% in some trusts. The level of risk posed by the remaining minority is unlikely to justify policy change at a national level.<\/p>\n<p>Vaccination is already compulsory for staff working in healthcare settings in France and Italy. However, both countries have a history of compulsory vaccinations in response to substantial vaccine hesitancy and outbreaks of vaccine preventable infections such as measles. In Italy, legislation introducing compulsory childhood vaccinations was followed by a decrease in the incidence of measles and rubella. Nevertheless, this policy is under review and may be made more flexible depending on regional vaccine coverage.<\/p>\n<p>The full text of the article is available in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/374\/bmj.n1975\">BMJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>DOI:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/bmj.n1975\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/bmj.n1975<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an article published in the British Medical Journal, we discuss the topic of vaccinating healthcare workers against Covid-19. Our conclusion is that compulsion is unnecessary and inappropriate. Parliament\u2019s decision to make vaccination against covid-19 a condition of employment for care home workers has fuelled the debate around compulsory vaccination for healthcare workers, which may [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296231,404],"tags":[269809],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-health","tag-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}