Fresh calls for the scrapping of mandatory vaccination have been made amid concerns that practice teams could be decimated because of the large numbers of unvaccinated staff.

The Royal College of GPs joined others in calling for the policy to be axed amid concern that 10% of practice staff may not be vaccinated. Those opposed to the policy sought to raise its profile by a mass demonstration in central London over the weekend, organised by a group calling itself NHS 100k, set up by ambulance workers.

College chair Professor Martin Marshall, speaking to the BBC, warned there would be “massive consequences” if mandatory vaccination is imposed on 1 April. He said it was “not the right way forward.” He called for a “sensible conversation” about mandatory vaccination.

NHS England medical director for primary care Dr Nikki Kanani, speaking ahead of the protest, said: “If you’re marching today, just take a moment, think about the people that you’ve been looking after who have experienced Covid, think about your colleagues who you’ve been working with, and think about the best way to make sure that we’re all protected, and that we’re all as safe as possible, because we are very much in this together and it’s down to us to look after each other too.”

NHS Providers chief executive Danny Mortimer said: “This will reduce frontline NHS staff numbers even further and lead to more gaps in capacity at a time of intense pressure and patient demand. 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.”

And Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab claimed the NHS could cope with the loss of clinical staff. He said: “We have got the resilience because we have got nearly 5,000 more doctors, nearly 11,000 more nurses than we did in 2020.”

The Office for National Statistics last week reported that 7.5% of medical professionals remain totally unvaccinated against COVID while 14% have not had a booster injection. Vaccination rates are higher among other staff groups. 5% of nurses are unvaccinated and fewer than 5% of physiotherapists, occupational therapists, medical radiographers, paramedics and podiatrists, according to the ONS. The UK yesterday reported 74,799 new cases of COVID infection and 75 new deaths from the virus. 297 deaths were reported on Saturday.