Coronavirus in Portsmouth: Hampshire police call for frontline Covid priority to protect officers

Hampshire representatives have said the frontline needs the jab to protect themselves and others.

It comes as today on the BBC home secretary Priti Patel said plans are in place to ‘try and make that happen’ if the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation agrees.

‘This isn’t just something we’re thinking about, there’s a lot of work that’s taking place in government,’ she said on the Today programme.

She added: ‘We have the supply and logistical plans in place, we will absolutely work to make that happen.’

Hampshire has among the lowest rates of staff off isolating due to Covid among British police forces.

Weaponised Covid – coughing or spitting – has been directed at officers throughout the pandemic and offenders jailed.

Hampshire Police Federation chair Zoe Wakefield said: ‘Police officers need to be vaccinated.

‘We can attend multiple addresses in one shift. We can’t always social distance.

‘We don’t want to be unknowingly spreading the virus and the public needs enough healthy officers to protect them.’

Frontline health and social care workers are due to be vaccinated in the second wave, but this does not include police.

Hampshire Police Federation secretary Garry Smith said: ‘Whilst the public and non-essential workers are told to stay at home, our members are still reporting for duty and still being deployed to all manner of calls.

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‘They are still going into homes, work spaces where the risk is great and with the new variant ever present in Hampshire, there is increased worry and anxiety amongst our members.

‘So providing police officers with a level of priority for the vaccine will help allay the fears of officers and their families as well as help to reassure the public that officers entering their homes, caring for people and forced into the personal space of another will be vaccinated and safe and therefore of little risk to them.’

John Apter, the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said Hampshire chief constable Olivia Pinkney backed police calls for higher priority in the vaccination programme.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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