Re: Covid-19: Health and social care staff must be vaccinated now, says BMA; vaccine scraps for doctors has ended?
Dear Editor
Perhaps, using its professional megaphone the BMA has made “an urgent call” for all health and social care workers to be vaccinated by the end of January[1], and seemingly by 7th January, the government/NHS England has acted in double-quick time by acceding to BMA’s request[2]. Although this is effectively another U-turn by the government, it is most likely that frontline healthcare staff including doctors would see this as a positive move.
However, it is sickening to read that doctors had to rely on leftover vaccines [1] or I would say scraps, directly due to the highly questionable, most insensitive policy of Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation (‘JCVI’) to relegate the priority status of frontline NHS staff in early December. In contrast, the US government considered “21 million frontline healthcare workers" will be first in line to receive the covid-vaccine [3]; in fact, on 22 December 2020, I asked, “would it not be a sensible time now for the UK government to urgently review their vaccination priorities even if it amounts to yet another U-turn?”[4], so I am personally happy about this latest change of stance by the government or its JCVI.
The next task for the BMA as a trade union should be to ensure all doctors receive their second vaccine dose in line with the manufacturers’ recommendation without risking possible efficacy issues which could potentially lead to in the extreme, catastrophic outcomes if there's a substantial delay in receiving the second dose. The WHO has already warned that there “is no scientific evidence for a delay of more than six weeks in administering the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against Covid”[5].
Rapid Response:
Re: Covid-19: Health and social care staff must be vaccinated now, says BMA; vaccine scraps for doctors has ended?
Dear Editor
Perhaps, using its professional megaphone the BMA has made “an urgent call” for all health and social care workers to be vaccinated by the end of January[1], and seemingly by 7th January, the government/NHS England has acted in double-quick time by acceding to BMA’s request[2]. Although this is effectively another U-turn by the government, it is most likely that frontline healthcare staff including doctors would see this as a positive move.
However, it is sickening to read that doctors had to rely on leftover vaccines [1] or I would say scraps, directly due to the highly questionable, most insensitive policy of Joint Committee of Vaccination and Immunisation (‘JCVI’) to relegate the priority status of frontline NHS staff in early December. In contrast, the US government considered “21 million frontline healthcare workers" will be first in line to receive the covid-vaccine [3]; in fact, on 22 December 2020, I asked, “would it not be a sensible time now for the UK government to urgently review their vaccination priorities even if it amounts to yet another U-turn?”[4], so I am personally happy about this latest change of stance by the government or its JCVI.
The next task for the BMA as a trade union should be to ensure all doctors receive their second vaccine dose in line with the manufacturers’ recommendation without risking possible efficacy issues which could potentially lead to in the extreme, catastrophic outcomes if there's a substantial delay in receiving the second dose. The WHO has already warned that there “is no scientific evidence for a delay of more than six weeks in administering the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against Covid”[5].
References
[1] BMJ 2021;372:n60
[2]https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2021/....
[3] BMJ 2020;371:m4924
[4] https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4924/rr
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/no-data-to-support-uk-dela...
Competing interests: See text; NHS doctor