Jobs for healthcare workers should be conditional on Covid jabs, ethicists say in BMJ

Experts claim ramifications of refusal and seriousness of coronavirus justify the move, Chiara Giordano reports

(EPA)

Healthcare workers should have to be vaccinated against coronavirus as a condition of their employment, a pair of ethicists have argued.

The experts, from the University of Melbourne and University of Oxford, say those refusing to be inoculated against Covid-19 should be temporarily redeployed away from frontline duties - and eventually even suspended if their refusal persists - unless they have a valid medical reason for not getting the jab.

In a peer-reviewed study, published in the British Medical Journal, the authors contend the ramifications of not getting vaccinated, coupled with the seriousness of the disease, “justify a mild form of mandatory vaccination policy at the very least”.