Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of NHS clinicians who are currently unvaccinated; and how many of those clinicians will be prohibited from engaging in clinical practice after 1 April 2022 when covid-19 vaccination becomes mandatory for NHS staff.

NHS England and NHS Improvement does not publish uptake data for specific workforce segments; however latest figures show that roughly 92,000 National Health Service (NHS) staff in England had not received the first dose of the vaccine as of 12th December. The Impact Assessment for these requirements sets out the estimated number of workers that would remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 at the end of the 12-week grace period despite not being medically exempt. This number was estimated to be 73,000 for NHS staff.

From 1 April 2022, the number of unvaccinated clinicians will depend on individual decisions and the positive choice to take up the offer of COVID-19 vaccination. The Government is focussed on driving an increase in uptake, with an overall net increase of NHS staff vaccinated with a first dose of over 55,000 since the Government consulted on the policy in September.

The impact assessment can be found at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039988/making-vaccination-a-condition-of-deployment-in-the-health-and-wider-social-care-sector-impact-assessment.pdf.