More than 1,000 ‘definitely unvaccinated’ staff at one trust

At least 1,000 staff at the country’s largest NHS trust are still unvaccinated with a week to go until the deadline, it can be revealed.

Senior leaders at University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust (UHB), which has a total workforce of over 20,000 people, told a board meeting that 9% of staff, including substantive and active bank workers, had an ‘unknown’ or ‘unvaccinated’ status as of yesterday.

Like many trusts, UHB is still working through hundreds of records manually, and seeking to contact staff, to establish which are truly ‘unvaccinated’ rather than ‘unknown’, the trust’s chief people officer, Cathi Shovlin, said.

But she confirmed to the board today that of approximately 1,799 substantive-only staff listed as unknown or unvaccinated, “at least” 1,171 of those in scope are definitely not vaccinated.

She said the mandatory vaccine programme was “having a significant impact on staff, who range in emotions from disbelief that this will go ahead through to fear of the vaccine, their job, their career, through to anger about the mandate itself”, Ms Shovlin told executives.

Low uptake has been found particularly among healthcare support workers, porters, housekeeping and cleaners, she said. Diagnostic services, outpatients and surgery, particularly operating departments, were among clinical areas with lower vaccination rates.

And there has also been reduced uptake in females, particularly women aged 20 to 35, and among Asian, Black British and Black Caribbean staff.

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Source: HSJ, 27 January 2022