Concern as too many home care workers decline coronavirus vaccination despite working with vulnerable people, head of NI’s roll-out Patricia Donnelly warns

Patricia Donnelly said that not enough domiciliary care workers have come forward for the vaccine despite “a number of appeals” from health authorities.

She was speaking during the latest weekly press briefing with Stormont health officials.

While take-up rates amongst health and social care staff more generally have”exceeded expectations”, she said home carers have been a cause for concern.

“We don’t have exact figures and we won’t until we have all the information from the vaccine management system which will come to us later in February,” she explained.

“But we know from analysing the number of people who were called forward for a vaccine during that wider health and social care appeal that we think it’s going to be well beyond 70% and upwarsd of 80% in some areas.

“Of course that doesn’t say there aren’t subgroups within that where there is a lower uptake.”

She continued: “What has been of concern to us is that domiciliary care workers who are out delivering service to vulnerable individuals in their home — I don’t think we have had enough of them come forward for vaccination.

“We have made a number of appeals to them, we have worked through their registrant body, the Northern Ireland social care council, and we’ve also been working through employers and representative bodies.”

She promised to make additional efforts to convince the home care workers to take up the offer of a free vaccination against coronavirus.

“We are going to make additional efforts to make that group come forward,” she said.

Overall, she said, the take up amongst frontline health workers has been “pretty healthy” and has “exceeded our expectations.”

Northern Ireland has now passed the quarter-of-a-million mark for the total number of doses administered, she said. By Monday afternoon, 258,000 doses had been given out in total, including second doses. A total of 233,000 people have been reached, of whom 63,000 are people aged over 80 — excluding care home residents — and 34,000 of whom are over 65.

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