NHS workers are ‘frustrated’ that admin staff are being offered the Covid-19 vaccine before frontline doctors and nurses and that hospitals and GP surgeries face delays to deliveries of the crucial jab.
The Doctors Association UK (DAUK) wrote to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock to call on him to let all doctors and nurses know when they would receive the vaccine.
The programme has been hit by delays since it started but had managed to get jabs into the arms of 500,000 people by Monday, Boris Johnson said.
But more than half of the 135 NHS Trusts in England are still waiting to receive deliveries of the jab, now two weeks after it was approved by regulators, reports The Guardian.
Duranka Perera, an A&E physician and treasurer at DAUK, called on health bosses to give clarity and assurance to those risking their lives to fight the virus.
‘How is it right that hundreds of staff – BAME included – working in A&E, as paramedics, porters and domestics aren’t getting top priority and are having to ring around for spare doses?,’ she said, reports The Times.
‘We cannot repeat the errors of the first wave when so many healthcare workers were lost in the line of duty.’
It comes amid reports that NHS admin staff and those working in Boots pharmacies in north-west London were given the vaccine at the weekend, ahead of doctors and nurses dealing with Covid-19 patients daily.
