The campaign to beat the pandemic

Press release Vaccination is still essential – don’t ditch our only protection from Covid!

The Covid Action UK campaign condemns the Government’s decision to stop offering Covid-19 vaccinations to the majority of the UK’s population.

A spokesperson for the Campaign, Joseph Healy, said:

“Rather than leading the way, the UK has been shown to be an outlier and a laggard on vaccination. This week we saw that Ireland will be vaccinating children from 6 months to 5 years and the US is already doing so. The US is moving towards an annual booster, and many European countries will have several shots per year. In the meantime, the UK government has accepted a JCVI recommendation that will mean that nobody under 50 who is not deemed clinically vulnerable will ever receive another Covid-19 jab.

This means that the Government’s vaccines-only policy will change to an infection-only policy, leaving us all completely at the mercy of this hazardous virus. Over 100 people a day are dying from Covid, not to mention the millions of us with long Covid and/or post-infection cardiac issues that are just biding their time. Repeat infections will only worsen our health and deepen our misery. New variants will render even limited post-infection immunity pointless.”

Many scientists, including the members of Independent Sage, have already labelled the government’s policy as both unscientific and dangerous. 20% of the population have not been vaccinated at all and many others will have had no vaccination for over a year. Now the UK is going to be condemned to having the NHS repeatedly overwhelmed by waves after wave of infection, without any mitigations in place to lessen their impact. 

At a time when the Chancellor and the government are concerned about the decreasing number of people in the workforce, this policy will lead to increasing sickness and further shortages in that workforce along with stress to a health system which can no longer cope. 

We demand that the UK government immediately reconsider this decision and offer Covid-19 vaccinations to all people in this country as long as the virus remains in circulation. This cannot be the final phase of the Covid-19 vaccine story in the United Kingdom!

WHO ARE WE?

• COVID ACTION is grassroots, activist campaign of individuals and affiliated labour and trade union organisations who came together in November 2020 to challenge the UK government’s approach to the pandemic.
• We are putting forward an alternative strategy – Vaccines-Plus – aimed at eliminating community transmission of Covid-19. We are campaigning for this to be adopted by Labour and all other political parties, the Westminster government, and the governments of the devolved nations, in order to save lives, prevent the collapse of the NHS and care systems, and stamp down on Covid-19 and all its variants.

CONTACT US:

Hashtag #CovidActionNow

Email:   info@covidaction.uk

Sign up for email alerts through Action Network

Socials: @covidactionuk on all major platforms.

Links:

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/how-to-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine/how-to-get-a-booster-dose/

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2023/0217/1357153-child-vaccines/

https://rcpi.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_f1476689-964a-46b3-9e1e-f72673240ebd/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-programme-for-2023-jcvi-interim-advice-8-november-2022/jcvi-statement-on-the-covid-19-vaccination-programme-for-2023-8-november-2022