To think Wales is in the UK

[Hoowhoowho]

I was vaccinated for COVID in Wales.
I work for an NHS trust in England
I also work for some agencies in England

For my job I have to be vaccinated against COVID and I have sent my Welsh Covid pass

However apparently I have been vaccinated ‘abroad’ and if I make an appointment and spend £70 to travel there I can get a U.K. Covid pass (er I have one) and none of them can accept my Welsh Covid pass.

Am I to assume NHS England is happy to lose not only all the non vaxers but all the staff who apparently live abroad in those foreign nations Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

Or perhaps they could make some attempt to join up the systems!

That’s insane.

That seems utterly ridiculous.

Complete madness!

DD was actuallly accused of being an illegal immigrant (we have a very obviously foreign surname) when she went to get her COVID booster while visiting PIL in England.

Person vaccinating said her NHS number was made up. dad showed her COVID NHS passport on phone and was told it wasn’t real and the only valid ones were on paper.

Madness.

The rules are different for devolved nations. That's the thing about devolution, Scotland and Wales and NI have their own procedures and so on. Devolution isn't a one-way street, having power brings responsibilities, this being an example. Saying the Welsh should be treated the same as the English when it comes to vaccinations is like arguing the English shouldn't pay for prescriptions because they're free in Wales - we're all one country, after all.

Wales chose to use their devolved powers so perhaps take it up with them to come ro an arrangement for your benefit.

Yes the lack of joined-up-ness is very annoying for people.

I don't believe anyone working in a UK vaccination centre hasn't heard of the NHS app though.

Actually I applied for updated paper covid passes for all of us in our family as we've had our boosters and it's easier to get a piece of paper out than faff about with the NHS app. They have come today but have the QR codes on so will expire again, which is really annoying - the original paper versions didn't.

The rules are different for devolved nations. That's the thing about devolution, Scotland and Wales and NI have their own procedures and so on. Devolution isn't a one-way street, having power brings responsibilities, this being an example. Saying the Welsh should be treated the same as the English when it comes to vaccinations is like arguing the English shouldn't pay for prescriptions because they're free in Wales - we're all one country, after all.
This 100%.

@MorningStarling

The rules are different for devolved nations. That's the thing about devolution, Scotland and Wales and NI have their own procedures and so on. Devolution isn't a one-way street, having power brings responsibilities, this being an example. Saying the Welsh should be treated the same as the English when it comes to vaccinations is like arguing the English shouldn't pay for prescriptions because they're free in Wales - we're all one country, after all.

Not really because this is not about having different rules, but just a bureaucratic matter of accepting the pass from Wales in England. My Covid pass is accepted all over the EU and abroad so this is pretty ridiculous.

@SeasonFinale not for my benefit, I could quite happily leave and work only agency and local bank, it’s entirely for the benefit of the English NHS. Where I work was more than 15 staff short in my department before covid isolations hit, they can’t recruit and often can’t even fill shifts with agency, they wanted to keep me. However if they don’t then it’s no skin off my nose just think a joined up system might enable them to actually have some staff.

@MorningStarling the rules about vaccination are just the same. It’s just that England won’t accept proof from Wales as it considers it foreign.

How can they differentiate between passes? I use the NHS website for my Covid pass and there's nothing "Welsh" on there.

Is there a Welsh version that I've missed?

That aside, it's fucking ridiculous that a NHS health board that presumably borders Wales and has a number of staff likely to commute into the area from Wales doesn't recognise Wales as part of Great Britain, let alone the United Kingdom which is slightly bigger

The UK still exists so unless there's a specific law prohibiting recognition of common practices such as vaccinations your Health Board is being utterly ridiculous. Can the union push back at all against this and appeal for common sense?

It seems crazy that proof of an i injection using stuff approved by all parts of the U.K. isn’t acceptable.

Must be to do with how trustworthy the English government feel the welsh governments nhs system is? Clearly they think it can’t be trusted for some reason.

I had this many years ago when I moved from Cardiff to England. I had to show my NHS card to register at a new surgery. They looked at the Welsh language side and announced that it wasn't British as it was in a foreign language. Despite the logo being the same. So I turned it over to the English language side and after a bit of huffing and querying with the practice manager the receptionist decided it was acceptable after all.

That is ridiculous

Sounds nuts!

Do the Welsh trusts accept English vaccinations?

I do think it's a bit mad, but then a lot of devolution is.

That's bonkers. I'd query that as some sort of dodgy scam with them. To point out it's ridiculousness. The "have you been hacked?"

Wales totally accepts UK covid pass issued for an English person / location as my husband works all over the uk and recently was in Swansea. His pass was accepted.

This 100%.

This 100% doesn’t really explain why vaccine passports issued within the UK shouldn’t be recognised throughout the UK.

I'm nnot sure I undersatnd. Are you saying your pass is in the Welsh langauge and that's what's causing the issue?

That's ridiculous. Phone 119 for advice, that's the phone number for advice in England and Wales so they should be able to help.

I've shown my Welsh Covid pass (the English language version) in England with no problem.

DD has a Covid pass , she was vaccinated in Wales , but works in london now , she didn’t have a problem

Agree it makes no sense at all.

My Scottish Covid passport was recently accepted in Ireland to go into a bar, no bother at all. But when I went in my NHS role to see a patient referred from an English Trust to our department in Scotland, they wouldn't accept my passport to let me in the building! If an actual foreign country can manage it I have no idea why England can't.

We have English staff coming up to work on the bank sometimes and there has been no problem verifying their vaccines so I think this is an England issue rather than a devolved nation one. Sigh.

Of course this is the fault of the other nations for having devolved healthcare...

Seriously? The same vaccines are being used and they are being administered as per the advice of the U.K. government (I.e whenever they advise a booster is necessary). Why should the English system discriminate against Welsh people who have exactly the same protection? Also, no the Welsh system is not less reliable than the English one simply because it is in Wales 🙄