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 ridiculous. Speak to your union rep if applicable. Otherwise contact your MS & MP to raise the issue with the trust and relevant ministers.

@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.

That is not the same, at all.

It sounds like you need to write to your MP and raise this with him.

Not really because this is not about having different rules, but just a bureaucratic matter of accepting the pass from Wales in England

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

Both of these.
Why does England have an issue with NHS COVID passports from other U.K. nations?
And why doesn’t England have an electronic COVID passport instead of a bit of paper?

Yup, madness.

We live in Scotland, I've always lived in Scotland, we pay tax here etc. Needed to go to a drop in centre in Devon while on holiday this summer - nasty infected insect bite.

My postcode wasn't recognised by the computer system. They couldn't pull up my GP's details on the computer. The nurse got advice on how to log my visit on the system and was told "put her through as a foreign visitor".

This has been a real issue with covid vaccines too, especially for people like students who had their first vaccine at home in England/Wales/N Ireland and then tried to get their second in Scotland or vice versa.

Yes health is a devolved matter but purposely creating systems which can't speak to each other is ridiculous.

My daughter has to travel from Cumbria where she’s at uni back home to wales to get her booster as nhs England will not vaccinate her.

She’s not bothering with her booster because of the hassle,
She’ll probably get in in Easter she said when she comes home next.
It’s mad

@ItsReallyOnlyMe

It sounds like you need to write to your MP and raise this with him.

Or her!

@HopefulProcrastinator your covid pass and NHS website will be NHS England. I have an NHS Scotland pass. The devolved nations all have different NHS websites. @Wotagain no it’s down to it being NHS Wales and not NHS England.

@BashfulClam thank you, I accessed my version of the pass via the Welsh government website link so naively assumed it'd be the right one.

I'm not downloading an app - don't have the device space so off to google a welsh version of a website that should just be one for the UK.

At this rate we may as well break up the union if they can't even manage vaccination adherence across borders!

DH has trouble as he's registered with the Army Medical Service and that doesn't link up with the NHS properly... (indeed, DDs and I having missing medical records from our time under that rather than NHS. They may be in a box somewhere in Wiltshire apparently...)

The NHS can be very disjointed. But you would think on the border areas they could cope with the mixture!

I don't think it's anything to do with devolution is it? NHS Scotland has been separate from NHS England ever since the NHS was created and I think the same is true of NHS Wales. It certainly was when my sister lived in Deeside in the 80s (so before devolution).

@HopefulProcrastinator you would think the systems would be compatible as they are all separate entities but are still the NATIONAL health service! There unfortunately is not one uk wide NHS site for this.

Bonkers
Dh has a friend who lives in England but his gp surgery is in Wales. He had a similar problem last summer when he wa going on holiday. He contacted his mp in desperation, only for the mp to say "yeah, I've got the same problem". Utter, utter madness.

The NI passport should be accepted in the rest of the uk - it was a part of the build of it as we have to be accessible to two sets of borders. I’m amazed the Welsh one isn’t as well. That’s madness.

[quote BashfulClam]@HopefulProcrastinator you would think the systems would be compatible as they are all separate entities but are still the NATIONAL health service! There unfortunately is not one uk wide NHS site for this.[/quote]
Wales is a nation. England is a nation. Scotland is a nation etc. The U.K. isn’t a nation.