Outrage in South Yorkshire over decision not to give police officers priority in Covid-19 vaccine roll-out

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced that only officers over the age of 50 will have access to vaccines as part of the nine initial priority groups outlined at the start of the roll-out.

He has been under mounting pressure to offer vaccines to all frontline police officers but despite thanking cops for their efforts during the pandemic stopped short of pushing them up the vaccine queue.

Steve Kent, chairman of the South Yorkshire branch of the Police Federation, said: “The answer given by the Health Secretary, which essentially means police officers are kept down the pecking order, is simply not good enough and unacceptable.

“The reason why the NHS and Social Services have rightly had the vaccine is based on the need for resilience and their exposure to patients and vulnerable members of society – and rightly so.

“But yet again though the government are blatantly ignoring the fact that our police are struggling with reduced resources and have arguably less resilience in reserve than any other public sector body and our frontline officers frequently deal with society’s most vulnerable and have to respond and support our NHS colleagues in attending medial incidents.

“This represents a staggering ignorance to what police officers and staff have to do on a day to day basis in South Yorkshire and across the country. Rest assured we will keep on with this until our members get the protection they need.”

Mr Hancock said: “We have ensured, through the clinical advice that we’ve taken, that the vaccine roll-out goes through those who are most at risk first. So any police officer who is aged over 50 will be part of the initial roll-out through the current groups from the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations which advises us on the clinical basis for the order.

“After that we will then look at what order we go next and we’ll consider, for instance, questions of people who are in professions where you might have to be in contact with more people and the impact of the vaccine on transmission and make a decision and publicise it as soon as we’ve made that decision.”