The UK’s Anscombe Bioethics Centre has hit out against the UK government’s proposal to make the Covid-19 vaccine mandatory for care home staff and other healthcare workers.
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre is the national Catholic bioethics centre for the United Kingdom and Ireland, and is based in Oxford.
In a statement, Director David Jones said that while there is a high level of support for vaccination among staff and residents of care homes, the majority of those surveyed by the government “were opposed to a coercive approach”.
He said that to threaten unvaccinated workers with dismissal or redeployment “fails to show respect for those on whom society depends to deliver care, and who have also suffered disproportionate risk and hardship during this pandemic”.
“Such threats also undermine the freedom of the consent that is needed before administering vaccination, or any other medicine,” Dr Jones said.