Vaccines are the best way to protect people from COVID-19
and latest estimates suggest that 105,900 deaths and
24,088,000 infections have been prevented as a result of
the COVID-19 vaccination programme (up to 20 August).
Vaccinated people are less likely to get seriously ill, be
admitted to hospital, or die from COVID-19 and there is
evidence that they are less likely to pass the virus on to
others.
Following a public consultation on making COVID-19
vaccination a condition of deployment for those working in
adult care homes, the government recently announced
COVID-19 vaccination would be required of people entering a
CQC registered
adult care home, unless exempt, to protect vulnerable
residents.
While residents in care homes are some of the most at risk
from COVID-19, the responses to this initial consultation
made a clear case for extending this policy beyond care
homes to other settings where vulnerable people receive
care and treatment.
The government, therefore, is now seeking views on whether
or not to extend vaccination requirements to other health
and care settings for COVID-19 and also for flu. Recent
research has shown people infected with both flu and
COVID-19 are more than twice as likely to die as someone
with COVID-19 alone and nearly six times more likely than
those with neither flu nor COVID-19, so it is right that
both are considered within the consultation.
The consultation proposes that, if introduced, requirements
would apply to frontline health and care workers– those
with face-to face contact with patients and clients though
the delivery of services as part of a CQCregulated activity. It
would mean only those workers that are vaccinated could be
deployed (or those with a legitimate medical exemption) to
deliver those services.
These are complex and important issues and the consultation
seeks to gather a wide range of perspectives from the
public and across the health and care sectors about whether
such requirements should be introduced and how they could
be implemented.
The easiest way to participate is by completing the survey
The consultation document has been translated into
Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Farsi, French,
Gujarati, Hindi, Kurdish, Nepali, Polish, Punjabi,
Romanian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian and
Urdu.
