Joacine wants immigrants to be vaccinated without a user number

Unregistered MP Joasin Catar Moreira has introduced to Parliament a draft resolution recommending the government “rapid access to the covid-19 vaccination by immigrant populations with and without an NHS user number”. Essentially, the MP wants immigrants to be able to schedule a vaccination without assigning an NHS user number — a process that, according to the law, is unnecessarily long.

By i, Joacine Katar Moreira explains that the initiative’s main objective is to “ensure that no one is excluded from covid-19 vaccination”. Current law requires that the vaccination process for the immigrant population take place in two stages: first, immigrants must request the attribution of the user number; Then – and only when you are equipped with it – can they decide when to vaccinate. However, the deputy specified that the first step is a “time-consuming process”, unnecessarily delaying the vaccination of the population.

As a solution, and given that “it does not make sense for immigrants to schedule immunizations to depend on user number assignment”, Yoasin suggests that immigrants can schedule their immunizations without this: that is, what was done previously in a ‘chain’ is now executed in ‘synchronous’. However, this “does not prevent a person from registering online so that the state can identify him/herself”, thus allocating the user’s number “in the context of” or “after” vaccination. “We will only be able to stop the increase in the number of infections and deaths the faster we get vaccinated,” Joasin said.

The MP points out that there is an “estimated world of 250,000 immigrants without an NHS number”, of whom only 30,000 are registered for immunization, and of those only 7,000 have already been called up, “which makes vaccination rates significantly lower than the general population”. The diploma also recommends the government to “strengthen the dissemination of the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 among the immigrant population and their associations” and “accelerate the vaccination process for users who do not have an NHS number and who have already registered on the website, but have done so. They have not yet been called”.