NHS Nurses shortage due to COVID-19 booster Jab Expansion
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The NHS will have to postpone some planned appointments to meet the target of 1,000,000 jabs a day, giving every adult in England a Covid-19 booster by the end of the year. Nursing leaders have expressed concern about the ‘scale and pace’ of the vaccine programme expansion. The target for giving every adult a booster jab was brought forward by a month of fears of a “tidal wave of Omicron” that could cause “very many deaths”.
In an address to the nation on Sunday evening, Boris Johnson said Britain ‘must urgently reinforce our wall of vaccine protection’ as he set the new deadline. He said scientists had discovered that two doses of a vaccine are ‘simply not enough to prevent the spread of the new variant and that, without a lightning speed mass booster campaign, the NHS could be overwhelmed. The mission to administer millions more jabs by December 31 will see 42 military planning teams deployed across every health region. Mr Johnson said; ‘To hit the pace we need, we’ll need to match the NHS’s best vaccination day so far – and then beat that day after day... This will require an extraordinary effort... And as we focus on boosters and make this new target achievable, it will mean some other appointments will need to be postponed until the new year. But if we don’t do this now, the wave of Omicron could be so big that cancellations and disruptions, like the loss of cancer appointments, would be even greater next year.
The highest number of vaccinations reported in one day in the UK was 844,285 on March 10 2021 – equivalent to vaccinating the entire population of Liverpool in one day! In a plea to GPs, doctors, nurses and others on the NHS front line, who he said had ‘worked incredibly hard throughout the pandemic, Mr Johnson said; ‘I must ask you to make another extraordinary effort now, so we can protect you, and you colleagues, and above all protect your patients from even greater pressures next year.
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