Delaying mandatory Covid vaccines for NHS staff would fail to stop “several thousand” people losing their jobs, a health service leader has said.

All frontline healthcare workers in England will need to be double-jabbed by April 1 in order to keep their job, meaning the cut-off date for a first dose is early February.

NHS staff will need to have two doses of the vaccine and official NHS figures show around 85,000 staff have not had any, with a further 40,000 just getting one dose.

Bosses will dismiss unvaccinated staff that can not be redeployed to a non-patient facing role.

“A delay gives a little bit more time [to get through winter pressures],” Mr Danny Mortimer, CEO of NHS Employers and deputy CEO of NHS Confederation, told The Telegraph.

“But the bottom line is we could give people another four weeks and we’d still be in a position where several thousand people will lose their jobs on the frontline.”

“I suspect there are lots of people who believe the NHS and Government won’t go through with this, that the Government doesn’t want to lose a single nurse or a single doctor. But the value of the vaccine far outweighs the loss of a few thousand people.”

The Telegraph reported that the Government is toying with “kicking the can down the road” with the mandate, and considering adding a booster requirement before April 1, effectively pushing the deadline back by six months.

When the idea of compulsory vaccination was first bandied around in late 2021 there were discussions ongoing that April 1 would be a suboptimal deadline, as the NHS would still be grappling with its usual winter surge.

“What we did say when we responded was give us a bit longer, don’t don’t make us implement this at the height of winter. Because this is our busiest time in the NHS,” Mr Mortimer said.