FRONTLINE NHS staff will reportedly be forced to have Covid-19 and flu vaccines as part of a drive to safeguard the most vulnerable.
A formal consultation on making the jabs compulsory is set to end on October 22, and Health Secretary Sajid Javid is said to be ready to quickly implement the rules.
The i newspaper reports Javid, who this week said unvaccinated staff should “get out and get another job”.
He is understood to be similarly determined health service workers should also be obliged to be jabbed.
After a change in law made this summer, care home staff have until November 11 to get double jabbed and if they do not they are legally barred from work.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has similar plans for NHS frontline staff unless they are medically exempt from having a vaccine.
It is understood that Boris Johnson is fully behind the measures.
Most English NHS staff, 89 per cent, are doubly jabbed.
But 8 per cent have not had one.
Javid is said to want NHS staff to get the flu jab because influenza could come back with a vengeance because it was an unusually low level as Covid predominated.
England is heading into winter with a “risky” level of Covid cases and Plan B could be triggered if hospital admissions hit 1,200 per day.
SAGE adviser Neil Ferguson, aka “Professor Lockdown”, said ministers might think about bringing back face masks and working from home if daily admissions double from their current point.
He said the rollout of teens’ vaccines and booster jabs must speed up to bolster immunity and keep a lid on infection rates.
Ending lockdown means Brits are freer than Europeans but “living with Covid” has led to higher cases and hospital admissions than similar countries.
Professor Ferguson said: “If we compare Covid cases per day in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal there’s a much lower level there.
“So they can afford to see something of a surge in transmission without unduly stressing the health system.
“We are much closer to the limit of what the NHS can cope with.”
He suggested ministers could start thinking about bringing back “Plan B” restrictions, including face masks, vaccine passports and working from home, if hospital admissions reach 1,200 per day.
Currently, in England, they are averaging around 600 per day.
