The British military expects to have all personnel vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of July.
James Heappey, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence responded to a written Parliamentary question from Daniel Kawczynski.
Daniel Kawczynski, MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, asked:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, when all armed forces personnel will have received their vaccination against covid-19.”
Heappey responded:
“All Armed Forces personnel are expected to be offered a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by 31 July 2021, in line with UK timelines for the national vaccination programme. Defence will ensure that no member of the Armed Forces, including those serving or deploying overseas, is disadvantaged in their access to COVID-19 vaccines.”
It was recently reported that the British Army will seek to discipline troops who refuse a Covid jab, according to official papers obtained by the Daily Mail.
The outlet say that orders to the Royal Artillery and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers state:
“Covid-19 vaccination. Anyone who is refusing to have the CV-19 jab is to be educated by the CoC (Chain of Command) and any rumours quashed. If they still refuse they may be deemed as unfit to soldier and dealt with accordingly as the CV-19 jab may be a requirement to deploy on operations/exercises, much like yellow fever.”
The Daily Mail report that by law the Army cannot force soldiers to get jabs. Yet being ‘unfit to soldier’ is an offence under the Armed Forces Act.
People vaccinated in the UK
If you’re curious as to where numbers now stand…
First dose total: 37,943,681
Second dose total: 22,643,417
Vaccinations given: 60,587,098
HMG has got a lot wrong, but I give them full marks for vaccination. I hope they don’t stop once the over 18s are jabbed. I think the 15 to 17 year olds should have at least the first jab, by the end of September, if we are not to have another lockdown this coming Winter.
They got it right by leaving it to the Experts and devolving control right down to the level of primary care networks ( say up to around 5 GP practices covering a 20k to 30k population). This was actually a really brave thing to do, a lot of nations have fallen into the trap of central control. it’s hard to purposefully let go of control of something that is a national crisis and does show a level of lessons learn from the beginning of covid where the NHS was hobbled by central government/depart of health dictating everything with hundreds of… Read more »
Borders, PPE contracts, Loan fraud, test & trace app, going in to lockdown too late & coming out too late, are just some of the things they got wrong. We could have built the Severn Barrier with what has been lost to loan fraud.
What utter drivel. Yes we could have closed all the borders completely and abandoned all the Brits abroad. And of course we would have run out of PPE, medical supplies, and food because the U.K. isn’t self-sufficient. 🤦♂️ PPE contracts? Tell me how many prosecutions have been undertaken by the police over these? None in the U.K. But if you bother reading foreign news sources you’ll know there have been several prosecutions in Germany of politicians at the state level over the awarding of PPE contracts. And Germany isn’t alone on that issue. Test & Trace has saved over 8,000… Read more »
Coming out too late has sent many firms to the wall. We will not see the full consequences of that for some time. There was a burst of business from all that saved money when shops/pubs reopened. Anecdotes say it is already tailing off.
Todays Daily Mail has a headline on page 2, “PPE boss slams “VIP lane” for contracts amid cronyism row”. The Daily Mail is hardly an anti Conservative paper.
Most impressed with the vaccination program here in the Uk and for all its faults the Government has simply just got on with the job. I cant help but notice that across the water in the EU they would rather push politics than the people resulting in a much slower vaccination rate https://i.postimg.cc/WzG0QH1H/Opera-Snapshot-2021-05-24-154210-ourworldindata-org.png This time last year we were all in the same boat regards C19, some countries pulled their fingers out and planned for the future quite a few didn’t What I can’t stand is how the usual suspects are demanding we halt our vaccination roll out and send… Read more »
The whole forcing vaccines is very interesting. You can’t actual force an individual With capacity to accept medical treatment as it’s a right to make poor decisions. But there is precedent to making some key vaccinations a requirement of employment. So clinical staff seeking employment would not pass occupational health requirements if they do not have evidence of specific vaccinations. It’s even more extreme for exposure prone workers (undertaking surgery, suturing, managing Bleeding wounds etc) In that you are required to have a bloods undertaken to check for blood borne diseases such as HIV and Hep B/C before you can… Read more »
I think it’s actually a good thing that forcing a medical treatment can’t be lawfully done under current legislation. I do think though that more could be done to make it harder to coerce a medical treatment. As it stands, difficult decisions about the balance of potential personal health risks against potential loss of income are being made every day by many people. Tricky decision, especially for those with families.
What would be very interesting for a test cases is if an individual knowingly went to work with a covid 19 infection or was allowed/made to work by their employer and another individual later went on to catch covid from that individual and died. It would be almost impossible to prove a causal link, but it’s possible ( say a individual who had no other contacts in that timeframe). just for clarity it is possible/legal to sometimes enforce treatment if an individual is deemed not to have capacity and a best interest assessment has been undertaken. This can lead to… Read more »
Interesting point. However you would have to bear this in mind with all disease causing pathogens. Back when I was studying this, it was banded about that one of the biggest killers of older people was viral pneumonia, often brought on by the common cold. Someone who passed on that cold to that older person has essentially killed them. Could they be held liable? Should they be? Likewise you have link after link which shows how deadly obesity is. Where does liability stand for that? With its proven link with bowel cancer should processed meat be banned, or it’s intake… Read more »
Yes completely agree. Historically we have pragmatically accepted relatively significant death rates related to a respiratory disease that we effectively ignored ( apart from vaccination/basic public health) we have Not ( before covid-19) in modern times put in significant restrictions on society to prevent Such things as flu deaths and therefore have effectively morally accepted the excess mortality rate of 10-20k that comes with flu having a free ride every year ( what’s interesting is as flu is far less infectious than covid 19, the present measures have effectively knocked it out of circulation in our country this year) So… Read more »
Fascinating stuff!
I agree with John G….top stuff!
Pleasure to read a balanced post on the subject. Bravo. I’ve always said it was a balance of risks. From what I gather the risk from Covid to a fit youthful age group is miniscule. Ignoring asymptomatic transmission, you have to balance the risk of covid to the risk of the jab. However, when dealing with such small percentages either side I have no idea how you make that judgement call. For me the issue comes in when the risk to people from the jab is greater than that posed by covid. If you force people to vaccinate on this… Read more »
You never get “long term side-effects” from a vaccine, that’s disinformation from the anti-vax loonies. If a vaccine causes any side-effects it’s within the first 6 weeks. After that, it can have an effect because it won’t be in your body anymore. 🤷♂️
He said long term effects from the virus, not the vaccine, but yes.
Sometimes it takes a while for it to be clear of any negative effects any new vaccine has had. Sometimes effects can be undetected at the time but can contribute to other health complications later on.
Likewise with novel pathogens. Although in that regard we do have the immune system, which is a wondrous thing. Heaven forbid if we have a repeat of something like Spanish flu.
Nope.
‘Anti Vax Loonies’ ?? The facts about Vaccines suggest that you are talking rubbish.
That’s not entirely true I am afraid. There is still some level of understand that still needs fully exploring around any long term issues with the messenger RNA technology that underpin many of the Covid 19 vaccines. Very specifically there is a theoretical risk around increases levels of autoimmune disease, this question will only be answered with long term studies which will be happening over the next 5-10 years. This is specifically not a view of any lunatic fringe but is set within the academic papers written about this technology from the academics who have been the pioneers ( there… Read more »
One hundred people developed Narcolepsy from Swine Flu vaccine, a very serious illness and permanent. That vaccine was withdrawn and the British government reached financial settlements out of court with each person. It was settled that way because pharma and government had been given legal immunity from prosecution. Suggest you check your facts for yourself before branding people with labels.