Ben Lowry: Reticence around requiring health workers to be vaccinated

He wrote: “In Northern Ireland however there is hardly even a debate about following England’s path. The main health unions vehemently oppose mandatory vaccination while the Health Minister Robin Swann won’t even agree that patients and their families have the right to ask which staff in a particular care home or hospital are not vaccinated.”

It is striking how politics, medicine and much of the media in NI was uncritical of lockdown, yet are reticent around jab compulsion for health and care staff.

Dr Tom Black recently talked on BBC Radio Ulster of the need to be respectful of arguments on both sides. Dr Black has for 18 months been given much airtime (and space in this newspaper) to outline his views on what needs to be done to control Covid. He did not hold back in calling for robust restrictions.

Yet when we contacted him this week to ask his view on vaccine compulsion he said “the majority of doctors in Northern Ireland are fully vaccinated against Covid” and that it was sensible for health and care workers to be vaccinated.

But that is, first, an irrelevant answer. Given that 90% of adults in NI have had at least one jab it would be remarkable if doctors were anything other than mostly jabbed. The concern is the alarming suggestion that health workers are actually less likely to be jabbed than the public, perhaps as low as 80%.

Second, Dr Black’s answer is soft in tone for a man who has been emphatic on Covid. Is it merely sensible for staff to be vaccinated as he says? Or is it not essential, given what doctors tell us (and I believe) about the value of vaccines?

Dr Black makes a fair point that the NHS cannot afford to lose even a small number of staff who might leave if jabs were compelled. But health systems elsewhere are not letting that deter them.

It must be galling for relatives of people in care homes, who were unable to visit for so long, to have to tolerate loved ones being cared for potentially by the unjabbed, when the relative has taken full precautions so they can visit the homes.

• Henry McDonald Nov 15: NHS workers should be required to have Covid vaccines

• Ben Lowry: The prospects of Article 16 being triggered are receding

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor. Other articles by him below and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the paper:

• Ben Lowry Nov 13: Essays in 2010 about NI on its 2021 centenary foresaw province staying in UK but not change from within

• Ben Lowry Nov 6: A poll that finds support for UK, DUP and ending protocol checks – not something you hear often

• Ben Lowry Oct 30: The return of inflation will suit debtors and punish savers

• Ben Lowry Oct 30: Tribute this week to a great News Letter columnist Ralph Bud Bossence

• Ben Lowry Oct 23:Centenary church service should have celebrated Northern Ireland

• Ben Lowry Oct 16: Lord Frost’s speech on NI reflected notably more robust UK tactics

• Ben Lowry Oct 16: David Amess was a conscientious Tory MP who always seemed to be smiling

• A message from the new editor Ben Lowry

• Ben Lowry Oct 9: Echoes of 2019, as Boris Johnson fails to proclaim his unionism in speech

• Ben Lowry Oct 2: Unionism could make great headway lobbying in the United States

• Ben Lowry Oct 2: A belated happy 284th birthday to ourselves at the News Letter!

• A link to 2021 columns by Ben Lowry

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