By Charlotte Webster-
The Health Secretary has appeared to rule out mandatory vaccinations, describing them as “unethical” after the Prime Minister called for a “national conversation”. Sajid Javid said he had “no interest” in making Covid-19 jabs required by law, hours after Boris Johnson raised the prospect of this draconian policy being considered.
“My view is that it’s unethical and also at a practical level it wouldn’t work,” Mr Javid told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“If you’re asking me about universal mandatory vaccination, as some countries in Europe have said they will do, at a practical level I just don’t think it would work. Getting vaccinated has to be a positive choice.”
He told Sky News: “I’ve got no interest in mandatory vaccinations, apart from in high-risk settings in the NHS and social care, which we’ve already set out that we will legislate for.”
The Health Secretary was responding to a press briefing on Wednesday evening to announce new curbs to tackle the omicron variant, the Prime Minister said the country could not “keep going indefinitely” introducing restrictions “just because a substantial proportion of the population still sadly, has not got vaccinated”.
The prime minister had earlier said he did not want ta society in which vaccinations were forced, only to latyer
However, today, a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has highlighted “signs of hope” on the omicron variant, as preliminary data indicated that hospitalisations across South Africa have remained low.
It follows data which indicates that the Omicron Covid variant may more easily re-infect people who have already had the virus or been vaccinated than previous variants, but could also cause milder disease, the WHO said Wednesday.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters: ”emerging data from South Africa suggests increased risk of reinfection with Omicron … there is also some evidence that Omicron causes milder disease than Delta”.
The WHO chief stressed that more data was needed before drawing firm conclusions, and urged countries everywhere to boost their surveillance to help provide a clearer picture of how Omicron is behaving.
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said that so far the data indicates the variant is “efficiently transmitting, and probably more efficiently transmitting even than the Delta variant.”
“But it means the virus is more efficient at transmitting between human beings. And therefore we have to redouble our efforts to break those chains of transmission to protect ourselves to protect others.”
Even if the new variant turns out to be less dangerous than previous variants, if it transmits more rapidly, it could still sicken more people, overburden health systems, “and more people die,” he said.
“Emerging data from South Africa indicates that omicron may cause less severe illness”, a WHO report stated.
Data which looked at hospitalisations across South Africa between November 14 and December 4 found that intensive care occupancy was only 6.3 per cent – which is very low compared with the same period when the country was facing the peak linked to the delta variant in July.
Yet, there are some who have been claiming the opposite with ulterior motives to influence a selfish agenda of their own in times where facts and reliability of information is most needed.