London (CNN)Few would envy Britain’s embattled National Health Service (NHS) workers over the past year. One of the world’s worst Covid-19 tolls has meant grueling shifts, danger, and workplaces full of grief and trauma. But Charles Oti would swap places with them in a heartbeat. A microbiologist by training, Nigerian by birth, Oti has spent four years working for the NHS honing a specialism in infection control.Oti’s skills are in short supply and among the UK government’s highest priorities for recruitment. But instead of taking a position on the front line of the pandemic response, he has been prevented from working and threatened with deportation.

“I believe I have the skills to make a difference,” says Oti. “This has been so frustrating because I am being wasted.”The case represents a personal ordeal and a wider issue. At a time when Britain is heavily reliant on immigrants to staff its essential services, particularly in the NHS, many of these same workers are fighting for their right to remain in the country. 

Living in legal limbo 

Oti, 46, received a five-year residence permit when he arrived in the UK in 2013 with his partner, a European citizen.After a spell in the private sector, he took a job with the NHS in London in 2015 as a medical devices coordinator. His regular duties included contamination control and ensuring the safety of equipment such as X-ray machines and respirators.Better money was available in private enterprise but Oti says that public service suited him. He felt the job made more of a difference to the lives of patients and enjoyed the camaraderie within the NHS’s multinational workforce which was “like a family.” There, he says he formed close friendships that helped him adapt to a new country.

But Oti’s residence permit was revoked without his knowledge when his relationship ended, and after returning from a trip to Nigeria in 2017, he was detained at the border and ordered to leave Britain. Since then he has existed in a legal limbo. Several applications to remain have been denied. Oti was allowed to continue working until 2019, when the Home Office informed the NHS that his status was insecure and he was suspended without pay. “They tell you to stop working and it puts a person in a very difficult position,” says Oti. “You can’t afford to make a fresh application or to appeal if it fails. One can go destitute because of this, a lot of migrants do.”Oti has avoided this fate with help from his friends and new partner — a British citizen and NHS worker — who have supported him while he has been unable to work.

Tip of an iceberg

Oti’s case is far from unique, statistics show. An estimated 170,000 of the NHS workforce of 1.28 million are foreign nationals, many of whom have an insecure status. The Doctor’s Association UK (DAUK) group is campaigning for Indefinite Leave to Remain for all NHS workers and their families, writing an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson that notes his own recent reliance on the service. “Charles Oti’s case represents precisely the reason DAUK have campaigned for NHS workers and dependents to be granted immediate Indefinite Leave to Remain,” Vice-Chair Dr. Dolin Bhagawati told CNN. “It beggars belief that the Home Office is not playing its part in the national effort to combat a pandemic that still affects the country.”Migrant rights campaigners believe the Home Office’s “Hostile Environment” policies, launched in 2012, are to blame. Those policies, aimed at deterring illegal immigration, introduced more stringent and frequent checks on immigration status that increased the difficulty of accessing services and left migrants more vulnerable. In the most notorious case of the “Windrush” generation, legal arrivals from the Commonwealth were cut off from housing, healthcare and banking services, and in some cases deported. The government has since apologized, commissioned an independent review, and established a compensation mechanism.

“The Home Office has a long history of treating migrants with disdain and cruelty,” says Minnie Rahman of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI). “The Windrush Lessons Learned review showed how deeply the Home Office needs fundamental and meaningful reform, but the Government has so far failed to act.”The government has introduced free visa extensions for around 3,000 health and care workers, which unions have criticized as it excludes thousands more. Oti’s solicitors are now pursuing a judicial review of the case, which they say is his last hope. A crowdfunding appeal for his legal fees has raised around £2,700 ($3,700).For Oti, the pandemic has highlighted the need for people to work across boundaries as our fates are invariably connected. “When you walk into a hospital, the consultant who sees you might be a migrant, and the nurse supporting the consultant could be a migrant,” he says. “When something goes wrong (like the pandemic) it can affect everybody.”

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Dr Katie Sanderson of DAUK spoke to CNN this morning regarding the growing trend of Covid deniers. She explained:

“The reason it is so upsetting people saying covid is a hoax is because you know that it will cause some people to behave in a way where they take risks they wouldn’t otherwise have taken. They get COVID and they potentially become very, very unwell. And that’s preventable.”

“And you just sometimes wonder, what do these people want? Do they want people to be dying in hospital car parks, dying in the streets, dying in corridors before they will accept that this is this is serious? It sort of beggars belief.”

“Vaccines are safe. And it’s really important that if people get a message to be vaccinated, go for it.”

DAUK’s Dr David Nicholl speaking to CNN about covid-19 vaccinations.

“Particularly because the BAME community have been hit so severely by covid, it’s really, really important there’s targeted messaging, particularly for at risk groups.”

“January is looking worrying because we are yet to see the effects of Christmas.”

“We’re worried that there is a disconnect between how people are behaving outside and what’s going on in our hospitals.”

Dr Jenny Vaughan on CNN

Dr David Nicholl from the Doctors’ Association UK speaks out on lockdown sceptics and emphasises the need to follow public health measures.

“We need to get through this together as a community.” he said, “It’s a very grave situation. In many ways, the situation is deteriorating and it is really, really important that people listen to public health advice.”

“Covid-19 is a very serious condition. Earlier this week a friend of mine died of it. It’s really important that the story of Covid-19 comes from healthcare professionals such as The Doctors’ Association UK, but also nursing staff and others, so that people realise the gravity of this condition and where we’re heading, which is not a pretty place.”

“It is fantastic news about the vaccine, but we still have to follow the public health measures.”

Coronavirus restrictions in England are “alas probably about to get tougher,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday.

Speaking to the BBC, Johnson said: “It may be that we need to do things in the next few weeks that will be tougher in many parts of the country. I am fully reconciled with that.

“I bet the people of this country are reconciled to that,” he added during an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. 

Pressed to elaborate what those tougher restrictions might be, Boris Johnson said: “There are obviously a range of tougher measures that we would have to consider. I don’t want to speculate, I’m not going to speculate now about what they would be.

“Clearly, school closures that we had to do in March is one of those things (…),” he added, as the controversy over the government’s mixed messages over schools reopening continues to dominate headlines in the UK.

Controversy over school opening: On Friday, it was announced that primary schools in London would be closed — but many primary schools in England are still expected to open Monday. 

In an official letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, the Doctors’ Association UK warned that the government should review the need to close schools and universities nationally. 

“Studies from Imperial College London show that the new COVID-19 variant has higher transmissibility and showed increasing numbers during the lockdown in November, especially in those aged under 20 years old. This may have been influenced by schools remaining open. The evidence is pointing towards urgent action being required to curb the spread all over the UK,” the organization wrote.

Surge in cases: On Saturday, the UK recorded its highest daily rise in coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic, with a further 57,725 new coronavirus cases and 445 deaths.

Echoing his warning in October last year, Johnson warned on Sunday that: “It is bumpy, and it’s going to be bumpy.”

Under the current coronavirus “Tiers” system, most of England falls under the toughest Tier 3 and Tier 4 restrictions — with the latter in place for all of London — with a strict stay-at-home message.

Read the full text here from January 3 2021: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-01-03-21/h_bbf0326563a818336d53f31e964e1022

London (CNN)The UK’s chief medical officers have defended a decision to delay second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in order to prioritize first doses, saying it will protect as many vulnerable people as possible while the coronavirus is running rampant. 

The new strategy, announced Wednesday by the head of the UK’s medicines regulator MHRA, means that the interval between doses could be extended to up to 12 weeks, instead of the three weeks previously stipulated. It has prompted a debate among experts, with the British Medical Association (BMA), a body representing UK doctors, criticizing the move to postpone appointments for the very vulnerable patients currently awaiting their second shots.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been in use in the UK since early December, when the country became the first in the world to approve it, but supplies are limited. The argument over the vaccination strategy comes as infection rates soar in much of the UK, thanks in part to a new, more infectious variant of the virus. Most of England is now under the toughest level of restrictions to try to limit the virus’ spread.

“This group of very elderly patients is at the highest risk of death if they contract Covid-19, which is why GPs are so concerned for them. It is grossly and patently unfair to tens of thousands of our most at-risk patients to now try to reschedule their appointments,” Dr. Richard Vautrey, chair of the BMA General Practitioners Committee, said in a statement Thursday.

The Doctors’ Association UK also raised “real and grave concerns” over the new vaccination strategy, warning Friday that it could undermine the National Health Service’s patient consent process, “as well as completely failing to follow the science.”

Meanwhile, Pfizer said it did not have data to demonstrate that just a single dose of its vaccine would provide protection against the disease after more than 21 days.”Pfizer and BioNTech’s Phase 3 study for the Covid-19 vaccine was designed to evaluate the vaccine’s safety and efficacy following a 2-dose schedule, separated by 21 days,” Pfizer said in a statement on Thursday. “There are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.” 

But the chief medical officers for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland defended the move in a letter to healthcare professionals published Thursday, saying it was based on the “balance of risks and benefits,” and that the “great majority” of initial protection came from the first jab.”The second vaccine dose is likely to be very important for duration of protection, and at an appropriate dose interval may further increase vaccine efficacy,” they said.”In the short term, the additional increase of vaccine efficacy from the second dose is likely to be modest; the great majority of the initial protection from clinical disease is after the first dose of vaccine.”

Pfizer said it had not evaluated different dosing schedules because “the majority of trial participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design.”In its open letter, the Doctors’ Association UK wrote: “Protection provided by the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine is considerably lower at 52.4% compared to 95% if two doses given three weeks apart.”

Read the article in full here: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/01/health/uk-vaccine-doses-chief-medical-officers-intl/index.html