England To Ditch Mandatory Vaccination Requirements For NHS Healthcare Workers
English Health secretary Sajid Javid has announced that the government will revoke mandatory vaccination requirements for frontline NHS staff in England. Unvaccinated staff have faced dismissal which in turn have prompted protests against the policy from the citizenry as well as many NHS workers.
According to the BBC, "The government has been under pressure from some within the health service to scrap the mandate, arguing that it would lead to a staffing crisis." This has been a common theme around the world. We've reported on multiple incidents where vaccine mandates have led to staff shortages, like in British Columbia, Canada, for example. Some hospitals have even had to close sections like maternity wards due to vaccine mandates. For the same reasons, many healthcare facilities in Michigan are allowing healthcare workers who have acquired natural immunity through previous infection to continue working.
Even if unvaccinated healthcare workers are in the minority, it's still significant enough to cause issues.
The Royal College of Midwives - which welcomed the suspension of the policy - had warned it could have a "catastrophic impact" on maternity services, while the Royal College of GPs and Royal College of Nursing had called for the deadline to be delayed.
Javid (Health Secretary) stated that originally, the vaccine mandate was a good thing, necessary and "makes no apology for it." He claimed that that changes in the virus have made it so that vaccines are not needed to be a requirement, and that the government can revisit the policy again if the virus changes into something that requires them to do so.
Vaccine mandates have been causing controversy since they were announced. The UK has also removed all mandatory vaccination requirements/passport requirements for the citizenry. A few other countries, like the Cheque Republic have done the same.
Massive protests are erupting all over the globe calling for governments to repeal vaccine mandates. This is due to the power of natural immunity, COVID vaccine injuries, COVID vaccines failure to stop the transmission of the virus, the severity/survival rate of COVID and above all, ethics and morality.
This is clearly not a "pandemic of the unvaccinated." Perhaps encouraging citizens to be vaccinated, and encouraging citizens to also not discriminate against those who refuse to do so would have been a better approach, like we saw in Japan.