From the 1 April, the legal requirement for health and care staff to be double jabbed will be removed. The requirements from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for registered care homes will be lifted from 15 March.
A public consultation on mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations was announced on 31 January to collect views on the removal of “vaccination as a condition of deployment as Omicron replaces Delta as dominant COVID-19 variant”. The consultation posed a series of questions about the government’s proposals, which covered the following areas:
- proposed legislative change
- steps to further increase vaccine uptake
- equality impacts
90% of responses supported the removal of the legal requirement for health and social care staff to be double jabbed and as a result the Government is revoking the regulations. There was some variation between different groups, with members of the public most likely to support revocation (96%) whereas 30% of managers and 22% of organisations providing health and care services opposed revocation.
The Government says that it “is continuing to work closely with royal colleges and professional regulators to strengthen guidance and consult on updating the code of practice on the prevention and control of infections in relation to COVID-19 requirements for CQC-registered providers of health and social care in England”.
