As of today, all care home staff who have yet to have received a double dose of the coronavirus vaccine will be left without jobs indefinitely until they get fully jabbed.
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No jab no job
This new law also extends to those have received only one dose; they will have to confirm a second dosage before working another shift. According to figures provided by the NHS, around 34,000 health care employees have not yet gotten double jabbed and only a marginal thousand have neglected the vaccine due to medical reasons. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said:
This is all about patient safety. We know that people, whether they are in care homes or they are in a hospital bed, are particularly vulnerable to this virus and it could be fatal. It’s our duty to do everything we can to protect them.
A harsh ruling
Unvaccinated health care workers have since been scrambling to find ways of bypassing the new law with some now owing hundreds of pounds in legal fees after running disciplinary hearings. Earlier this month, a proposal to extend the deadline for vaccination to April was set into place before being harshly rejected by the government.
Now, hospitals and care orginisations are predicting a serious staff shortage as a result of the new law with some saying that homes could very well be losing one to two carers on average. 32-year-old Dave Kelly from Merseyside explains feeling betrayed after having lost his care-worker job:
I am most annoyed at how we have been allowed to work the front lines with little to no protection the entire time, yet we are now an instant danger.
