Personal Injury Compensation
Vaccination hesitancy
SS v London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames and Another [2021] EWCOP 31
A trickle of cases heard by the Court of Protection has been collected and reviewed over recent weeks concerning vaccine refusal
by people lacking capacity to make decisions about being vaccinated. Until now, the Court of Protection has granted applications
to declare that vaccinations would not be unlawful. The outcome of the most recent case to come before the court was different,
and the facts are clearly distinguishable from those in the earlier cases. In it, a senior judge, Mr Justice Hayden, declined
to order a Covid-19 vaccination for an 86-year-old woman with dementia, and ruled that SS, a care home resident, should not
be given a Covid-19 vaccination by force nor should she be deceived into accepting it.