A SPECIAL exemption for healthcare staff 'pinged' by the NHS app, which is being considered by ministers, has been branded 'foolhardy' by an Oxford GP.

The Government is looking to scrap Covid-19 self-isolation rules for NHS workers amid fears the service could be crippled.

The latest weekly figures show that the number of app alerts soared by more than 60 per cent to a record 350,000 in England.

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But Dr Helen Salisbury, who works at the Jericho Health Centre, took to social media to highlight that even staff who have received both Covid-19 vaccine doses could still become ill with the virus.

She said: "A fully vaccinated GP colleague is in hospital with Covid-19.

"The plan to relax isolation rules for NHS staff seems foolhardy - as an immunosuppressed patient would you like to be treated by someone with asymptomatic Covid?

"How many of your staff do you want to infect?"

 

If the plans go ahead, self-isolation would be replaced with daily lateral flow testing from July 19, which only have about 50 per cent accuracy.

Up to a fifth of staff could be absent from one NHS trust in just three weeks from now, potentially leading to the cancellation of hundreds of operations, a representative organisation has warned.

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NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS trusts in England, said a combination of staff having to self-isolate due to rising coronavirus infection levels and people 'rightly' taking annual leave that was delayed due to the pandemic is likely to put a strain on the health service.

The organisation said a growing number of trusts had told them of their concerns in recent days about how self-isolation of staff is now 'significantly impacting their ability to deliver care'.