Health and care workers should have a Covid-19 vaccine as part of their “professional responsibility” to patients, England’s deputy chief medical officer has suggested.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said there was a professional standard that staff should adhere to that involves not putting people in their care at risk.

NHS England has said around 88% of patient-facing NHS Trust health care workers in England are likely to have had their first dose of a vaccine by now.

But there are no published vaccine uptake figures for people working in social care.

If you’re a patient or a relative, would you prefer a healthcare worker to attend you or your relative if they have been vaccinated against Covid, or would you not really mind either way?

Asked how he feels about people working in the NHS or care homes who are refusing to have a jab, Prof Van-Tam told Good Morning Britain: “I agree with Professor (Chris) Whitty in that I think healthcare workers have always had a professional responsibility to take steps themselves to prevent them from being in a position where they could harm patients through infectious diseases they might have.

“That’s been a very clear position on hepatitis B vaccine and performing invasive procedures, particularly surgery, for decades and decades.

“And so I think that’s the professional standard that everybody ought to adhere to.

“Now, the other way of framing this is saying, if you’re a consumer of healthcare, if you’re a patient or a relative, would you prefer a healthcare worker to attend you or your relative if they have been vaccinated against Covid, or would you not really mind either way?”

In a wide-ranging interview, Prof Van-Tam said he does not mind being called ‘JVT’ by Government ministers.

“I don’t mind… in actual fact, behind the scenes, everyone calls me JVT,” he said.

“It is just what I’m known as within the whole Government ecosystem, but really going years before that, that’s kind of professionally how I’ve been referred to, and it’s absolutely fine.”

On the issue of whether vaccines would work against all variants, he said there was good evidence they were effective against the dominant strains in the UK, including the Kent variant.

He added: “Do we have direct data that they’re going to work against (South) Africa or Brazil? No we don’t.

“We have some evidence from the clinical trials for some of the vaccines, but until really these vaccines come up against those new variants in large scale, we’ll have to wait for those answers.

“But I still think they’re going to reduce the likelihood of having severe disease.”

Prof Van-Tam also sought to reassure anyone wishing to become pregnant about the safety of vaccines, saying there was a lot of “nonsense out there” about their supposed effects on fertility.

“There’s just no evidence at all that there are any issues in relation to planning a family, or fertility,” he said.

“So if you’re in a risk condition and you’re called, then my advice would be to get on and take the vaccine.”

The leading scientist also told presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that his family find his celebrity status “quite amusing” but he wants to “just go back to being a normal human being”.

Asked about whether he as a tattoo, he said the “subject does come up quite regularly in the Van-Tam household”.

“But it’s about whether, when the moment is right, when all this pressure is finished and maybe I’m in a quieter phase of my career, I’ll have a little left deltoid BUFC (for Boston United Football Club),” he said.

Asked about schools reopening, Prof Van-Tam said “we’ve got to do it”, even though there will be occasions “where infection is brought into the household”.

He added: “We just know that is a fact and most scientists have said very clearly that reopening schools has an effect on R (reproduction number).

“But, as we’re kind of opening schools in this direction, we are pressing down on the virus in the opposite direction.

“More and more of our priority cohorts are being vaccinated… and the uptake has been absolutely astonishing, significantly over 90% in all of the groups so far.”