A senior scientist has called for teachers and school staff to be vaccinated early against Covid-19, saying it would only take a day to do so.

Speaking to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, Professor Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at UCL and a former director at the World Health Organisation, said teachers needed to be prioritised above other workers for vaccination as they spread the coronavirus amongst all age groups.

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Asked by Baroness Masham if all teachers and school workers should be vaccinated, given the new variants of the coronavirus from the UK and South Africa, Professor Costello said: “Your point about teachers is interesting because one argument says, ‘Well, teachers are different - if you vaccinate teachers why don’t you vaccinate shop workers, taxi drivers, railway workers? Why should they be a special case?’

Coronavirus: Teachers ‘should get priority for vaccine’

“First, they’re the only group that I know of who will spread this amongst age groups because all the others will not be in contact with children.

“They’re the only group of workers I can think of who cannot use social distancing and masks when they’re at work in order to do their work.

“We’re also asking them to go back to work before many other groups without protection, and we want to keep teachers in work and not to be off work absent with the infection or self-isolating, so a vaccination early would be the best way to reduce it.”

Professor Costello, a member of the Independent SAGE group of scientists, added that vaccinating all school staff would only take one day.

“Now if people say, ‘Yes, but there are lots of other people and you’re going to delay them getting the vaccine,’ there are 500,000 teachers - that takes a day under the current regime,” he said.

“So we could actually vaccinate all teachers within a day and, on those grounds, there’s a strong argument to be made that teachers and teaching assistants and people in schools should be getting a vaccine earlier and move up the priority table, but I know government are thinking about this right now, so we’ll have to wait and see.

“I think those arguments are rather persuasive,” he added.

Recently there have been growing calls for teachers to be vaccinated, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer arguing last week that teachers should be vaccinated during the February half-term.

The idea also has public support, with an Ipsos MORI poll revealing that 46 per cent of the public think teachers and nursery workers should be next in line to receive the Covid vaccine after the current priority groups have been vaccinated.

But the government has not moved on its position.

Last week, the prime minister said that teachers in Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation groups one to nine - which includes all those aged 50 and over, plus people aged 16 to 64 with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk - will be vaccinated as a matter of priority.

This would not bump them above anyone else on the list based purely on their profession.