Practices risk losing staff because of the mandatory vaccination rules, GP leaders warned today.

It came as one GP announced she is leaving practice because she has refused to undergo COVID vaccination.Dr Fui Mee Quek announced her plans as GP leaders warned that the impact on practices of mandatory vaccination rules is a “significant concern.”

Primary care has no central records of the number of unvaccinated staff but Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs told *The Times*: “Whilst we don’t have the data in general practice to understand how many GP staff will be affected by making vaccination a condition of employment, it is a significant concern when we’re working under intense workforce and workload pressures that are being exacerbated by COVID, and this is one of the reasons the college opposed this move.”

Dr Quek, from Sutton, south London, said she decided not to be vaccinated because of an absence of long-term safety data on the new mRNA vaccines. She has written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying that mandatory vaccination means she is “being forced to stop work, which I am very upset about”. She added: “We do not want to be reassigned to a role with no patient contact. This is what we trained for; this is what we love.”

She added, speaking to Sky News: “I’m not anti-vaccination. I encourage my patients to have their vaccines and vaccines have saved millions of lives over the years.You are likely to be safer if you have the boosters and the vaccinations but that’s not the issue. The issue is that even if you do, you could still transmit the virus.Even if 100% of the NHS workers are vaccinated, it is still not 100% effective.”