Covid-19 jabs should be voluntary: Arisina Ma

Workers with priority for a Covid-19 vaccination are hoping they won’t be punished or barred from work if they choose not to get inoculated but the Public Doctors’ Association stressed that it should be voluntary.

Medics and elderly care home staff are among the 2.4 million people who have priority, with bookings to open next Tuesday and inoculations to start from Friday.

Arisina Ma from the Public Doctors’ Association said authorities should make sure it’s convenient for busy medics to get vaccinated, and it should be voluntary.

She said they had tried to get clarification on the matter from the Hospital Authority.

“For any invasive therapy or invasive things that require mandatory measures, it must be very, very safe and very, very efficacious. But I don’t think that any one of the current vaccines can reach this standard yet,” Ma told RTHK.

The government says its inoculation programme against Covid-19 will be open for bookings next Tuesday, with the first jabs expected to be administrated on February 26.

Civil Service Secretary Patrick Nip said on Thursday that several groups of people prone to developing serious symptoms as well as those who are at high-risk of transmitting the virus to vulnerable people will be invited to be vaccinated first.

Nip said a total of 2.4 million people who are aged 60 or above, medical staff, care home residents and workers, as well as those providing essential services, like postmen, or people working at the border would be given priority to get the shots.