Rules forcing care home workers to have Covid jab to be lifted in weeks

CARE home workers will no longer be forced to be double jabbed from March 15.

The Health Secretary confirmed the regulations will be revoked this month.

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Under previous plans thousands of workers would have been forced out of work if they refused to have the jab.

It comes as ministers have declared the pandemic all but over, as Covid rules on isolation and testing have been scrapped.

The country is now learning to live with the virus – with Brits encouraged, but not enforced, to get the vaccines.

Sajid Javid today instead urged unvaccinated health and care workers of their “professional responsibility to be vaccinated”, amid the U-turn.

He told the House of Commons: “I have concluded that it is right and proportionate to proceed with revocation of Covid-19 vaccination as a condition of deployment in all health and social care settings, and have today published the government’s full response to the consultation on GOV.UK.

“I am also laying the regulations to revoke vaccination as a condition of deployment today.

“These regulations will come into force on 15 March, and will remove the requirements already in place in care homes, as well as those due to come into force in health and wider social care settings on 1 April 2022.”

Care home reps previously blasted the “flip-flopping” Government saying it had “devastated” the work force.

It is estimated around 40,000 workers have already lost their jobs due to the measures, which came into effect in November, with April initially bookmarked as the cut-off date.

A senior Government source said: “Omicron has changed things.

“For Omicron, while it is more transmissible, all the studies have shown it is less severe. That has changed the conversation about whether mandatory jabs are still proportionate.”

Most people who catch the Omicron virus are presenting with cold-like symptoms and for most people it is milder than the variants that came before it.

A string of positive studies show Omicron is milder than other strains, especially in the vaccinated.

Covid booster jabs protect against Omicron and offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.

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Plans to make Covid jabs mandatory for NHS staff were scrapped earlier this year amid fears of staff shortages.

Mr Javid said previously: “The Government has made its decision on this.”

He added: “It is not only right but responsible to revisit the balance of risks and opportunities that guided our original decision last year.

“While vaccination remains our very best line of defence against Covid-19 I believe that it is no longer proportionate to require vaccination as a condition of deployment through statute.

“We will launch a consultation on ending vaccination as a condition of deployment in health and social care settings. Subject to the responses and the will of this house, the government will revoke the regulations.”

He said that in the latest wave of Covid, just one in 15 people were infected during the peak.

Just under a quarter of people in England have been infected – and 84 per cent of people over 12 have been jabbed.

The best way to protect yourself and your loved ones, and to ensure Britain can “learn to live” with Covid, is to get jabbed – or boosted.