Why NHS staff are shunning the vaccines [Article From 9/12/24]

NHS staff are boycotting covid and flu vaccinations while the government is busy promoting them to the public in a television and radio campaign. Concerned by the low uptake in the health service, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has appealed to healthcare practitioners to get jabbed. This season, only 14 per cent of NHS workers took covid jabs and only a quarter received flu vaccines.

The NHS say this is because hospital staff are busy and have no time. Official figures tell a different story as NHS staff are taking double the days off sick post-covid vaccine rollout than they have since 2009. Unusually, in 2020, absences rocketed in the summer months; absence is traditionally low between May and November. Covid vaccines were offered to front-line staff from December 2020, a sharp rise in absences began in March 2021, three months into the rollout, when seasonal illness is traditionally waning.

Sick days have doubled from the baseline of 3.75 per cent to 6.75 per cent, the highest since 2009, and have not dropped back to 2019 numbers which were between 4.5 per cent and 4.75 per cent. Even during peak pandemic months, absences ranged between 4.75 per cent in February 2020 to 6.10 per cent in May 2020.

One NHS doctor, who did not want to be named, said adverse reactions in staff and patients are contributing to ‘vaccine hesitance’. She said: ‘We have all noticed the adverse effects in our patients. Many of us have become vaccine hesitant after seeing the debilitating health issues our patients are now dealing with, and those we are dealing with ourselves. No health professional that I have spoken to wants any more boosters.

‘The type of reactions we see range from local allergic reactions to a whole switch-on of histamine systems, such as POTS and MCAS.’

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), characterised by dizziness, is a blood circulation disorder which causes an abnormal increase in heart rate when standing up, while mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) causes allergy symptoms in multiple systems.

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