Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are so many health workers turning down the vaccine?

(Photo by BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)

On Saturday the government hit its target of administering a first vaccine dose to 15 million of the highest-risk groups for Covid 19. By now, everyone over the age of 70, all healthcare workers and vulnerable groups should have been offered a vaccine. It is an impressive achievement which stands in contrast to many of the other things that have gone wrong over the past year. But there is a rather large fly sitting in the ointment. While 90 per cent of eligible members of the general public have turned up for their appointments (97 per cent in the over-80s), the same is true of only 80 per cent of healthcare workers.

In some places, the take-up among healthcare workers is even lower. A study by the University of Leicester into 19,000 staff employed by the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust found that just 64.5

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