Have jab or we force you out, homes warn staff

CARE home bosses are demanding that staff have the Covid-19 vaccination – or risk losing their jobs.

Several carers have contacted The Mail on Sunday to claim that they have been threatened with the sack or a pay cut if they refuse.

One young worker at an old people’s home in Manchester said she had ‘no choice’ and ‘no voice’ when making the decision.

‘I told them I was scared to have the jab but they didn’t listen,’ she told the MoS’s Medical Minefield podcast. ‘They said I had to have it within the month or find another place to work.’

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, added: ‘They tried to make me feel guilty, telling me I could bring the virus into the home and people would die.’

Another carer at a residential home for disabled people near Liverpool claims she was threatened with financial penalties after expressing doubts about the vaccine’s efficacy. ‘We’ve all been told that if we don’t have it and we’re absent from work because of anything Covid-related, we won’t get our monthly salary,’ said the care worker. ‘I thought [the vaccine] had been rushed through, and hadn’t been trialled sufficiently.’

The claims emerged as the deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) warned that the take-up rate among care home staff was still ‘far too low’.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Professor Anthony Harnden said that just 66 per cent had received an inoculation despite overwhelming evidence that both the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines are safe.

‘If [care home staff] are to stop potentially transmitting to those vulnerable people, they need to take the immunisation up,’ he said.

There are an estimated 680,000 residential care workers in England, suggesting more than 230,000 are yet to be vaccinated. However, the National Care Association (NCA) said only around seven per cent of staff remained nervous or resistant to taking the vaccine. Its chairman, Nadra Ahmed, said: ‘The figure [getting the vaccine] is not as high as we’d like it, but it will depend on how many people have been able to access it.

‘We’ve got to remember that access was an issue at the beginning and we also know that we’ve got around 20 per cent who are either isolating or have had Covid and so they will be waiting to get the vaccine.

‘If we assume the 66 per cent figure is right, then of course it is low and we would like it to be higher. We’ve got to look behind that to see why.’

Care home residents account for about a third of all deaths from the virus in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics. Around 400,000 people live in homes.

Downing Street has said that ‘no jab, no job’ policies are ‘discriminatory’ and that vaccines should not be mandatory – a view echoed by Prof Harnden, who said: ‘I would much prefer to be able to persuade by the power of argument than to force people or to make people lose their jobs.’

Some firms have, however, taken matters into their own hands. Barchester Healthcare has said it will not hire workers who refuse the vaccine and will encourage uptake by linking vaccination to bonuses, promotions and enhanced sick pay.

Britain’s largest union has accused care providers of using ‘punitive’ tactics to ensure staff are vaccinated.

In a letter to Health Minister Helen Whately, Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: ‘Care employers who put punitive measures in place for staff, or make it a condition of work, are undermining trust and confidence in the vaccine.’