The government must extend temporary registrations for doctors and nurses who returned to work during the pandemic, a senior health official has said.

GP leaders have sounded the alarm over plans for massive new vaccination campaigns, with the arrival of the bivalent booster for COVID and plans for a mass polio campaign in London. Health Secretary Stephen Barclay, meanwhile, has promised to step up international recruitment to help the NHS cope with winter pressures.

NHS Confederation expert Ruth Rankine said today that extending the temporary registrations would be “essential”. Speaking to The Times, Ms Rankine, the confederation’s director of primary care, said: “Extending temporary registrations for returning doctors and nurses with the GMC and NMC would not only be very welcome but is essential. This would go some way to supporting the upcoming vaccination programmes as well as increasing the workforce in primary care.”

She said primary care would need “all the support” it could get with “large treatment backlogs, chronic staff shortages, and now the importance of rolling out millions of booster jabs alongside other crucial vaccination programmes, including for flu and polio”.

Some 30,000 doctors took temporary registration after the pandemic struck in March 2020 and 10,000 still hold it, the GMC told The Times. It said just 1,000 have decided to seek permanent registration to return to work in medicine – but that the number “may well increase” as the deadline for temporary registration to lapse approaches. The GMC said it would be up to Mr Barclay to decide whether to extend the scheme.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “We know this could be a challenging winter and we are working closely with the NHS to put preparations in place that will help with the pressures ahead — including through boosting NHS 111 and 999 support, tackling delayed discharge and using new innovations such as virtual wards. We are also growing our NHS workforce to help bust the COVID backlog and provide life-saving COVID jabs to those eligible, with over 4,300 more doctors and 10,200 more nurses compared with last year.”