Is the Maltese government planning mandatory vaccination for all the medical and hospitality workers?
Blog post by Marica Micallef
Today’s news related to covid was about Minister Fearne stating that he is going to revise the mandatory regulations in two weeks time. At the same time, the main news in the UK was that NHS nurses demonstrating against mandatory vaccination.
A few weeks ago, the Times of Malta had an article entitled “Trade unions seek a meeting over quarantine, mandatory vaccination”[1]. Perhaps, this article is partially misleading because in one of its paragraphs mandatory vaccination is given more importance than quarantine. The damages of quarantine should have been foreseen and discussed by the unions from the beginning. Unfortunately, unions lack hindsight and are too politicised with the result that they failed to realize where these quarantines restrictions were leading to. This important paragraph reads:
‘The group said it was concerned that the government may be preparing legislation introducing mandatory vaccination in certain workplaces such as the medical and hospitality sectors.’
‘“Such legislation, even if this could be just a rumour, needs to be discussed at the MCESD since the ramifications are enormous on both the unions and the employers,” the unions said.’
I do not want to raise any alarms because a rumour remains a rumour until it becomes a fact. But from which source or from whom did the unions hear this “rumour”?
This media portal had already pointed out that mandatory vaccinations were already being discussed as far back as April 2021.[2] Now, this is reaching more countries and it is hitting Europe and the UK.
In September 2021, the British government hosted a public consultation on whether to make COVID-19 and flu vaccination mandatory in the health and wider social care sector.[3] This policy, which was approved, made all front-line health staff needing to have two COVID-19 jabs by April 2022 to work in the NHS across England, unless they have an exemption. Any health staff who does not is dismissed.
According to Inews, by September 2021 there were more than 116,000 NHS workers who did not have the jab[4]. Two months later, “around 126,000 frontline health and social care staff in England could risk losing their jobs next spring after refusing to have mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations”[5] On the other hand, just a day before the publishing of the latter, the Daily Mail stated that “The new ‘no jab, no job’ rule in the NHS might only spur on around 20,000 workers to get vaccinated against Covid”[6]
Although statistics are now being recognized to be rather dodgy, whatever is the number, this dismissal will lead to self-destruction! British nursing and midwifery leaders have urged Sajid Javid, UK’s health minister, to delay the introduction of compulsory vaccination because “They fear that the exodus of frontline personnel that mandatory vaccination is likely to trigger will make it even harder for NHS care providers to maintain normal care, given it would happen just as the service is grappling with record levels of staff sickness closely linked to the Omicron variant.”[7]
On the other hand, the U.S. Health authorities are allowing nurses and other workers infected with the coronavirus to stay on the job if they have mild symptoms or none because of “hospital staffing shortages and crushing caseloads that the omicron variant is causing.”[8] What logic is it that one can still work in a hospital if one has covid but doctors and nurses who don’t have covid and are unvaccinated can’t and are fired! Can you perceive the absurdity of all this?
If a nurse or a doctor with years of medical training is willing to get fired from the job instead of taking the jab,[9] and if thousands of healthcare workers are choosing to lose their job instead of getting vaccinated, doesn’t it mean neither do they trust the science nor the jab?
Isn’t this dismissal of unvaccinated medical staff a kick in the teeth to this same staff who worked tirelessly with covid patients at the beginning of the pandemic before the vaccine rollout? Weren’t these the same frontliners that we were told to protect and keep safe by staying home and locked up?
With this mass exodus, could the running of entire units of hospitals become unsafe and unviable?
During a real health crisis, governments don’t fire their nurses and doctors!
Will Malta follows UK’s suit?
[1] https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/trade-unions-seek-meeting-over-quarantine-mandatory-vaccination.927256
[2] https://simonmercieca.com/2021/04/07/are-mandatory-vaccines-lawful/
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/making-vaccination-a-condition-of-deployment-in-the-health-and-wider-social-care-sector
[4] https://inews.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-nhs-workers-havent-had-jab-uk-mandatory-vaccination-rules-1190790
[5] https://www.nursinginpractice.com/clinical/vaccinations-and-infections/more-than-120000-healthcare-staff-could-refuse-mandatory-vaccinations/
[6] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10183197/No10s-estimates-just-20-000-unjabbed-NHS-staff-compulsory-jabs.html
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/12/sajid-javid-urged-to-delay-mandatory-jabs-for-nhs-staff-in-england
[8] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/us-hospitals-letting-infected-staff-members-stay-job-82184760
[9] https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-unvaccinated-doctor-warns-pm-he-risks-mass-exodus-of-nhs-staff-over-mandatory-covid-jab-policy-12514056