Really? Because at the moment things are dire for non-emergency medical treatment and having drives to vaccinate the whole population on a regular basis will take a huge amount of resources.
It would probably be less than 1% of the NHS budget, it would cost roughly 3-5 times what we spend on the annual flu vaccination drive, depending on who it was extended to, if it was annual, twice yearly etc. The annual flu vaccination is a net positive impact on the country of £90-270 million per year.
The NHS annual budget is £176.5 billion, if you scaled the flu vaccination program up to cover annual Covid boosters it would cost less than half a billion annually. Doing things in a rush, without planning, and without the ability to negotiate long term contracts is always more expensive than a sustained, ongoing process.
Also, despite a huge vaccine drive and many people having had THREE jabs we’re looking at a lockdown very soon and already have one in Wales and Scotland.
We are, however looking at the data it also appears that if we had 70%+ boosted we would not be, also, the current vaccines are still based on the Wuhan strain, as per the flu vaccines any annual booster would be updated to contain multiple versions of variants which would both be potentially in circulation, and closer to any new or emerging variants. That would also significantly improve immune response.
We have more cases than ever before and businesses are having to foot the bill for time off work for the many many people infected.
Yes we have more cases than ever, that is very unfortunate. It is also not good that anyone (businesses or the taxpayer) are having to foot the bill for people off work due to Covid, which is why long term prevention, is better than cure.
We’re looking at another furlough scheme AND non-essential appointments are being cancelled left right and centre to vaccinate people.
No "we" are not, there will not be another CJRS or SEISS over Omicron because the Conservatives would tear themselves apart first, rather than implement it. We do need to vaccinate people, we also need to update vaccines and keep vaccinating people, but when that is part of a long term scheme you employ people to do it, rather than needing to pull them off of other duties at short notice.
So yeah, not too convinced that we do have the resources or that mass vaccination makes a huge difference to numbers off sick.
Mass vaccination works, even if imperfectly, If we keep updating vaccines and keep administering them then that will work reasonably well, although not perfectly. If that is going to be sustained over time then the answer is to recruit specific teams to do it, that does have a cost, but a significantly lower cost than the alternative. Covid has cost the government and economy around £500 billion, probably £750 billion or more by the end of next year. The cost of Brexit is around £42 billion per year and counting, if we need to spend half a billion on an ongoing vaccination program we can find the money, in terms of the annual budget, total borrowing, or potential tax revenues, it is a rounding error.