Sir, – HSE chief Paul Reid is quite right to take every opportunity to urge people who are not fully vaccinated to take up the offer of vaccines. Vaccines work. They reduce the risk of infection, the risk of hospitalisation and the risk of serious illness or death. That is not an opinion. It is a fact.
Part of the problem, it would appear, is close to home. Some healthcare workers are declining the offer of a vaccine and, in cases where this poses a threat to their health or to the health of those in their care, they are redeployed, no doubt on the usual full rations.
Prof Martin Cormican, HSE clinical lead for infection control, says: “Clearly we would all be a lot more comfortable if all healthcare workers looking after vulnerable people were vaccinated . . . We understand that people don’t like being redeployed” (News, August 20th).
People who are employed and paid to look after the sick, who decline vaccination, and as a result are seen as a risk to themselves and to those in their care, are to be moved away from the frontline to safer quarters.
Their colleagues must take up the slack and continue to care for their patients at risk to their own health.
The pandemic has caused thousands of deaths in this country and trying to deal with it has cost tens of billions of euro in public spending. The minority in our population who decide that they know better and decline vaccination should be invited to pay for their own healthcare when they become ill, as they will. And those of their number who work in the health service should be asked to take their talents elsewhere.
Victoria’s state premier in Australia criticised those making “sh***y choices (which) keep us all locked down for longer than we should be” (World News, August 20th). He hit the nail on the head. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Mooncoin,
Co Kilkenny.