Covid vaccines: Barnsley hospital urges staff to get jab

Hospital bosses have announced plans to persuade staff to get a Covid-19 vaccination before they become mandatory for health workers.

Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust believes up to 300 of its 4,000 staff members have not been fully vaccinated.

The government has said front-line health workers would have to provide evidence of vaccination to remain in their jobs from April.

The trust said it would work to "allay any fears" held by staff.

Dr Richard Jenkins, chief executive of Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said he expected a data validation exercise to reveal about 200 staff remained unvaccinated..

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Speaking to a meeting of the trust's board, Dr Jenkins said they would support staff to reconsider and "hopefully allay any fears they may have about the vaccine, and support them to get vaccinated by the cut-off date".

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he added that Barnsley has had the highest death rate per 100,000 population in the country.

The trust's medical director Dr Simon Enright said the number of staff whose vaccination status was unknown amounted to less the 5% of its workforce.

"We've looked at doctors in particular, and out of the 534 doctors, there's only 27 now that we don't know their status," he said.

"We highly suspect that a number of them have had the vaccine."

Steve Ned, director of workforce, said that the "prime means of persuasion" would be "one-to-one conversation with someone from a clinical background".

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