The Council of State has established that doctors cannot refuse to be vaccinated against Covid: Healthcare personnel “must make every effort to treat the sick, and never to create or aggravate the patient’s risk of contagion”:
The Council of State rejected the appeal presented by an Abruzzese doctor, who had received a provision of suspension from the medical order for his refusal to get vaccinated. According to the judges, such non-compliance would be the result of unsubstantiated scientific doubts: in no case can a doctor put the patient’s health at risk, contributing to the spread of the infection.
For judges, the obligation to vaccinate against Covid it is legitimate to protect public health. In one of the passages of the Palazzo Spada decree he observes “once again”, “that the prevalence of the fundamental right to health of the community with respect to individual doubts or groups of citizens on the basis of reasons that have never been scientifically proven, takes on an even more peculiar and decisive connotation when the refusal of vaccination is opposed by those, such as health personnel , both – by law and even earlier for the so-called “Hippocratic oath” – obliged in every way to do everything possible to treat the sick, and never to create or aggravate the risk of contagion of the patient with whom in the exercise of professional activity he enters in direct contact “.
From 15 December, according to the decree on the Super Green pass, the vaccination obligation for doctors and health personnel is also extended to the third dose. In addition, other categories were included in the provision, such as employees of health facilities (medical staff already had the vaccination obligation for the first two doses), school workers and law enforcement. With this sentence of the Council of State a principle is reaffirmed: the safety of the community comes before individual fears, not supported by scientific theses. These doubts, we still read in the decree signed by the president of the Third Section Franco Frattini, also concern doctors “despite the huge amount of scientific studies that indicate the clear prevalence of the vaccination benefit against Covid 19 for the individual and for the gradual reduction of the pandemic still seriously underway”. Those who fail to comply will therefore no longer be able to work in contact with patients, and will be suspended.
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“The rest – it still reads – only the massive vaccination also and above all of those who ordinarily come into contact with other citizens for service, especially in a situation of vulnerability, represents one of the indispensable measures to reduce, even in current days, the newly emerging multiplication of infections, hospitalizations, victims and potentially very dangerous new variants “.
There is no topic for discussion even in terms of the infringement of rights complained of by the doctor: “It would be incomparably more serious “ the damage for “the community of patients and for general health, compared to that complained by the health worker on the basis of scientific doubts certainly not proven in the face of the vastly superior evidence, with the provision of tens of millions of vaccines in our country alone, of the effects positive vaccinations to combat the pandemic and its devastating human and social consequences and the deprivation of solidarity as a cornerstone of our Constitution “.