Covid – Page 2 – Joan Twelves

Save lives now, then we can all live well!

Much in Labour’s 10-point plan for living with Covid is welcome, but it ignores the immediate crisis – we have to stop people dying from the virus before we can live with it.

More than 350 deaths per day, over 100,000 daily positive cases and nearly 20,000 covid hospital patients is neither acceptable nor normal.

The Tories’ narrative that the pandemic is over, their removal of even the weak Plan B protections (mask-wearing, working from home and the limited use of covid passes), and – even more worryingly – their plans to shortly end self-isolation for those testing positive for Covid, have to be challenged by Labour.

Johnson and Javid’s rejection of infection control measures in order to assuage their right wing backbenchers, is reckless to the extreme, and is based on eugenicist theories rather than any regard for science or the public’s health and wellbeing.

The brilliant NHS vaccination programme has reduced our risk of death dramatically. But there are no guarantees that Omicron’s inevitable successor variants or mutations will not be more vaccine resistant and deadly.

Not only do we need to keep promoting vaccination – including by calling for employers to give staff paid time-off to get jabbed and recover – we need the protective and mitigation measures of a Vaccines Plus strategy.

These include continuing personal protection measures such as:

social distancing and wearing masks in indoor public places, including schools, colleges and workplaces;
setting indoor air quality standards, with CO2 monitors and HEPA filters being installed in all classrooms and indoor public venues;
all NHS, social care, teachers and those deemed at high risk being issued with free FFP2/3 masks;
financial support for all those required to self-isolate or shield, and for businesses and self-employed who are taking a hit from the economic damage caused by the continuing unpredictable high levels of employee and customer absences.

Labour rightly says the test and trace system needs fixing. The first step there must be to dismantle the current discredited outsourced system and hand it (along with the necessary funding) over to the public health professionals in local authorities and the NHS who should always have been in charge of it.

It should go without saying that both LFD and PCR tests must remain free and readily available to all UK residents.

The right to work from home or flexibly has been a long-term demand by many, especially parents and carers, and the experience of the past two years means that now is the time for it to be legislatively enforced.

Adding these immediate essential measures to Labour’s longer-term plans and opposing the UK government’s lethal approach means we can stamp down hard on the virus and make it possible for us all to live our lives without the constant threat of chronic disease or death hanging over us.

But unless and until this deadly virus is suppressed to the lowest levels possible both in the UK and globally, we won’t be able to say we are living with it.

Omicron – Time for a Circuit Breaker

Eighteen months ago, we were applauding our NHS heroes and celebrating a renewed sense of community as neighbours and volunteers went out of their way to help each other.

But today the UK bears a horrific resemblance to countries like Brazil and those red states in the USA where the virus is being allowed to let rip in the name of ‘living with it’, and conspiracy theorists and fascists spread their lies and fantasies through social media to influence those who are fed up with restrictions or nervous about vaccination. This corrupt, contemptuous and callous Tory Government ignores the science, puts profit before people, lurches from one inadequate and tardy lockdown to another, and is now more concerned with placating its hard-line right-wingers and making sure its seasonal piss-ups go ahead than doing everything necessary to protect people from illness and death.

Although it is clear that the majority of the population have more trust in the scientists than the politicians – as can be witnessed by the immediate queues for boosters and the majority who say there should be a Christmas lockdown (Savanta ComRes poll) – without clear, urgent leadership, as well as substantial financial and practical support, the current societal chaos will continue. Shortages, sudden closures and company collapses will get worse as Covid surges yet again.

I have lost count of the number of times I have written or said ‘this government has blood on its hands’. But I will say it again.

It is hard to overstate the scale of the Omicron crisis. Recorded cases are hitting new records every day. Omicron is extremely transmissible and more able to evade existing immune responses. Despite all the talk of Omicron being ‘milder’, there is no evidence of this thus far. And even if hospitalisations and deaths are less than resulted from previous waves, the effect on the NHS and other emergency services is just as dire. Those at work are being stretched beyond exhausted breaking point by the absence of co-workers, and resources are being diverted from trying to catch up on that six million-long waiting list as well as the 7-9 million ‘missing’ patients who have not sought treatment during the pandemic. Omicron will result in yet more avoidable sickness, hospitalisations and deaths.

Before Omicron took off, the UK was already running at about 50,000 new Covid cases a day. Today that has doubled to around 100,000. Lambeth, where I live, has the highest rate in London, itself the Omicron epicentre of the UK, and there has been a 90% increase in the past week. The Mayor of London has been forced to declare a Major Incident to help ease the pressure on the capital’s hospitals. My local hospital, Guys and St Thomas’, where there was a seven-hour vaccination queue last week, has cancelled non-essential services and redeployed staff. GPs, nurses, and community health workers have either been diverted to vaccination centres or are volunteering out-of-hours.

Despite Johnson’s claim that ‘we are throwing everything at it’, the move to Plan B is far too little too late, and most of its measures are ineffective. While the boosters are a real advantage, they will take time to have an effect, and we urgently need to drive down transmission of the virus now. The Tories are refusing to face up to this because any action has a price tag.

The Zero Covid campaign has repeatedly called for sensible mitigation measures – improved ventilation (especially in schools, colleges and workplaces), mandatory mask-wearing in all public places, social distancing, the right to work and study from home where possible with all necessary practical, psychological and financial support, including increased sick pay and the restoration of the Universal Credit cut, for those required to self-isolate or shield. We also need an effective publicly-run Test & Trace system.

The campaign is backing Independent SAGE’s call for an immediate circuit breaker. No one wants to cancel Christmas. But equally no one wants to risk infecting their family. We need everyone to be able to cut down their contacts now. Advice to limit contacts is meaningless for many of us if it isn’t backed up by financial support, and companies compelled to allow workers to stay home. That means grants, VAT relief and the return of furlough so that businesses which lose custom or have to close can afford to keep staff on the books.

We have repeatedly said that we do not favour lockdowns to prevent community transmission of the virus other than as a last resort. The Tory Government’s failure – yet again – to follow scientific advice and to mandate the implementation of the most basic public health protections means that they will be guilty of leaving no other option than to impose one – yet again – in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Nobody is safe until we are all safe

The emergence of something like the Omicron Covid-19 variant was entirely predictable – and predicted by international scientists, health experts and campaigners. As the heads of both the World Health Organisation and the United Nations have repeatedly said: Nobody is safe until we are all safe.

Since the brilliant and speedy discovery of vaccines against Covid-19, the rich countries of the world have practised vaccine apartheid against the Global South. Repeated calls by South Africa and India, supported by Biden’s USA, have failed to overcome dogmatic opposition by a group of high-income countries including the EU, the UK and Switzerland, to their landmark proposal to temporarily waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 medical products.

Without that patent waiver, along with a willingness by Big Pharma to share know-how and expertise and for the G7 rich countries to honour their promises to provide funding and equipment from labs to syringes, the people of every country of the world are being condemned to wave after wave of death and disease.

To date, 42.6% of the world’s population has been fully vaccinated. But only 3% of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated. Lower middle-income countries have fully vaccinated 26.6% of their people. That’s a huge difference compared with 67.3% in high income countries, and 62.9% in upper middle-income countries.

African countries have administered 234.7 million doses. That means 7.1% of the population of the continent is fully vaccinated.

There isn’t a shortage of vaccines. 9.1bn vaccines have already been manufactured and 12bn are expected by the year’s end – enough to vaccinate the whole world. The problem is one of capitalist politics and distribution.

Here in the UK, we are faced with a government which will always put profits before people, whether at home or abroad. Having let the virus rip since ‘Freedom Day’ on 19th July – and nonchalantly presided over around 1,000 deaths per week and 40-50,000 new cases per day since then – the threat of Omicron has forced it to take some baby steps to look as though it is heeding the warnings of its chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, that they should “go hard and go early”.

Hard? A mask mandate in shops (but not pubs), on buses and trains, and in school corridors (but not classrooms) is hardly hard. All these mitigatory measures and more have been in place in the UK’s devolved nations for months. Early? That’s questionable given that they are the least of the measures that should have remained in place to fight Delta, not wait for the predictable Omicron to arrive.

While we welcome the extension of the vaccine booster programme in the UK – and would welcome it even more if it went hand-in-hand with the UK supporting the TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organisation – the Zero Covid campaign is not alone in calling for an immediate change of strategy and for less reliance on solely pharmaceutical solutions.

While nobody knows how resistant to the existing vaccines and how deadly Omicron may prove to be, the speed of its community transmission in South Africa shows that it is extremely infectious. To stop not just the spread of Omicron but also of the dominant Delta variant, we have always supported sensible mitigation measures – ventilation (especially in schools), mandatory mask-wearing in all public places, social distancing, the right to work and study from home where possible with all necessary practical, psychological and financial support, including increased sick pay, for those required to self-isolate or shield.

We also need an effective Test & Trace system – and it is very worrying that the government is looking to charge for LFT tests and start dismantling the whole system -which, however inadequate, is all we’ve got, unless they finally recognise that this is best done by local authority public health teams and give them the funding to do it. PCR tests for travellers should be free and carried out priorto travel.

These measures are needed to avoid the lockdown that no one wants. But the government continues to ignore the science, including advice on how to tackle new variants, and to refuse to mandate the implementation of the most basis public health protections. It is their mixed messages, their disastrous policies that could very well lead to another lock down this Xmas as the fourth/fifth wave hits, whether that goes by the name of Omicron or Delta.

Published in Labour Hub, 6 December 2021

The Covid-19 Pandemic Isn’t Over Yet

Reckless?

The polite description of a strategy which is currently averaging over 1,000 deaths a week, over 7,000 hospitalisations, and the highest number of Covid-19 infections in Europe with over 35,000 daily cases.

Murderous is my non-polite description.

A return to normality?

Only if you think those 1,000+ deaths are normal.

Labour has an absolute duty to the people of this country to call out the Tories for their deadly, eugenicist policies; and Conference is the perfect opportunity for the Leadership and Shadow Health Team to put forward a robust alternative to the government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To date, Labour’s approach has been marked by timidity and mealy-mouthed, piecemeal criticisms. The Tories’ scandalous strategy of ‘living with the virus’ has barely been challenged – and no alternative has been put forward.

The Tory government has ended shielding, furlough, and business rates’ holidays. It refuses to provide adequate ventilation in schools. It has failed to increase the absolutely miserly levels of statutory sick pay and is cutting universal credit. It cannot even bring itself to mandate masks in crowded places. Johnson, Sunak and Javid are acting as if the pandemic is over.

The idea that that we must learn to live with high levels of Covid-19 has to be challenged. It is unprecedented in the modern era for government policy to allow preventable deaths of its own citizens on a mass scale. We do not live with cholera, we do not live with polio, we do not live with tuberculosis, and we do not live with typhoid. Like all these diseases, Covid-19 can be managed, and community transmission eliminated.

Medical science and technology have progressed rapidly in the past decades; the speed at which the Covid-19 vaccines were developed is testament to that, so why on earth should we accepting a strategy which does not just allow, but encourages, people to continue to spread a virulent and deadly disease?

I am a great fan of vaccination – and as socialists we should all be supporting it as a collective societal good. But we must not forget that 20% of adults have not had even one jab – one in five of us; breakthrough infections occur even after two jabs; over 100,000 children missed school last week (a figure undoubtedly heightened by the Government’s delay in authorising teenager jabs); and business and industry are facing unpredictable staff shortages as those thousands sick or isolating can’t work.

Vaccine-Plus

But vaccination on its own is not enough. It must be backed up by a range of mandatory mitigation measures, which focus on protection and support rather than restrictions on activities. They include an effective, local and fully-funded Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support operation run by the NHS and local authorities; all workplaces, including schools, colleges and hospitality venues, being made Covid-safe; and continuing precautionary measures including self-isolation, social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing and good ventilation.

As Independent Sage scientists say in their recent Covid Winter Protection Plan (https://www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Winter-Plan-final.pdf)

“Unless such protections are implemented immediately there is a serious danger that more intrusive and wide-ranging restrictions will become necessary later”.

When we talk about vaccination we mustn’t just talk about the UK – a global pandemic requires global vaccination.

No one is safe until everyone is safe

Many on the left have questioned whether the UK should be giving boosters and teenager jabs when poorer countries are crying out for vaccines. But the ‘beggar my neighbour’ approach of the rich capitalist countries isn’t really a supply issue. It is political.

Countries like the UK are turning their backs on the poorer parts of the world; countries they have not hesitated to plunder and wage war in for centuries. Vaccine apartheid and cuts in overseas aid go hand in hand. It’s no surprise that a government which refuses to ensure British children are safe when they go to school, hoards vaccines and refuses to support patent waivers, profit restrictions, prices at cost, or sharing technology, science and know-how.

So rather than engaging in a factional civil war, the Labour leadership should be talking about issues that really affect millions at home and abroad. Conference should be showcasing a different approach to dealing with the pandemic that has dominated all our lives for over 18 months, and that has not gone away – however much we all wish it had.

This is an edited version of my article in the Morning Star on 27 September 2021 during the Labour Party Conference.

Has the government gone down the pub?

The replacement of the philandering Matt Hancock by hard man Sajid Javid has opened the way for eugenics to take over the UK’s pandemic policy.

No longer in the land of on-off delayed lockdowns, faulty PPE, dodgy contracts and helping your chums get rich; we are now on Plague Island where the living-with-the-virus, individualistic tough guys survive and the poor, unfit and weak cower and die.

Society has become increasingly polarised – and much nastier – in the past decade.. For me, the way the assassination of Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist in the run up to the Brexit referendum was quickly swept under the carpet was as much a marker of a societal shift as the referendum itself. Instead of our political classes and media seeing that wholly exceptional event as one over which we needed to pause and reflect, the only changes have been an increase in lies, corruption, undemocratic practices, and the denigration of political opponents.

In the early months of the pandemic, while the government’s ineptitude and failures led to the disaster of care home deaths, lack of PPE, increased inequality, and the world beating mortality records, at least (under pressure from the unions) they provided business grants, furlough pay and support for shielders. Civil society demonstrated an unexpected but most welcome neighbourliness and community spirit. NHS and key workers were valued, young mutual aiders helped with shopping, and most people understood we were ‘all in it together’.

But now, 16 months later, that spirit has dissipated as the government has washed its hands of any responsibility for the lives and livelihoods of its citizens. It is as though, just as we are all fed up with the pandemic, they’ve got bored of dealing with it and have decided to move on to all the other stuff they want to do like privatise the NHS, attack asylum seekers and migrants, restrict voting rights and the right to protest. If the pandemic can be depicted as a war with the virus, the government has raised the white flag and gone down the pub.

Government messages are powerful. Personal responsibility is now the watchword. The kind of personal responsibility that can lead to an asthmatic self-employed single mum not being entitled to any sick pay or welfare payments when she catches covid; allow mask-less drunks to spit on transport staff; and encourage a speaker at an anti-vaxx rally to compare doctors and nurses with those who were hung after standing trial at Nuremberg.

Javid is such an admirer of the right-wing US philosopher Ayn Rand that he reads her work twice a year. So the man now in charge of the NHS, the lynchpin of our welfare state, is someone who believes that the only proper functions of a government are the police, the army, and the courts.

Which brings me to ‘Freedom Day’. The past week has been full of news about how the Track and Trace system is forcing workers to quarantine. In other words, it’s doing what it is meant to do. With mitigation measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing now our personal responsibility, it is the only defence we have against the virus. Despite all its faults – not least SERCO, Baroness Dido and that £37 billion – a functioning FTTIS system is the essential partner to vaccination.

But the failure of government and the press to explain that the avalanche of pings are a direct and predictable result of letting the virus rip through the community, where the delta variant is particularly hitting the young, means that trust in the system has collapsed – more and more people have switched it off and are not bothering to test themselves or their children. No wonder the official statistics in respect of case numbers are being questioned.

I speak to so many people who are in despair. They don’t know who to believe or what to do for the best. The hope the vaccines offered is being undermined by doubt and confusion. Most vulnerable and disabled people are locking themselves down again. This is not cowering; this is common sense.

Last weekend the London Labour conference overwhelmingly backed the alternative strategy of the Zero Covid campaign; based on public health not free market principles. Mitigation measures need to be reinstated; workplaces made safe; practical and financial support provided for self-isolators, and super-spreader events put on hold for a few weeks. Conference also supported an immediate independent public enquiry and the speedy international deployment of vaccines. Delegates called on the Labour leadership to support this strategy.

Ayn Rand said: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” There is no doubt that Javid and Johnson have to be stopped, and that we, the labour movement, have to be the answer.

Joan Twelves

Published by Labour Outlook, 28 July 2021

The awful truth confirmed

Dominic Cummings is not a reliable witness but much of what he has said to the select committees about this Government’s catastrophic and criminal handling of the Coronavirus pandemic rings more than true to those who were on the front line or closely following the Government’s actions, reactions and inactions from January 2020 onwards.

Disregard

A contemptuous disregard for the lives and wellbeing of elderly, disabled, at risk, poor, black and brown people, as well as low-paid key workers whether in the health or social care services, schools, supermarkets, delivery or public transport sectors, has characterised the Government’s approach throughout. A decade of Tory austerity, cuts and privatisations mean that the public services we need and expect to support and protect us have been either non-existent or woefully inadequate.

Ignored

130,000 deaths and thousands condemned to a life of chronic illness have been the result: many of them our friends, workmates and relatives. For the past 18 months we have endured delay and prevarication, lies, corrupt procurement practices, a now-denied herd immunity policy, the economy being prioritised over public health, sick and infectious people being shunted between care homes and hospitals, many forced to work and learn in unsafe, unventilated environments, insufficient help and support being provided to those needing to self-isolate, the experience and knowledge of other countries, let alone the UK’s own scientists and experts, being repeatedly ignored. Cummings has confirmed what we have been saying for months.

Responsibility

Dominic Cummings bears as much responsibility for the social murder he has exposed as those he now castigates. His catalogue of errors, while extensive, omits much that he was responsible for – most significantly the £37 billion failed Test and Trace system, purposely set up as an outsourced, centralised system to bypass local public sector expertise.

Roadmap

Nothing Cummings has said will stop a third wave of the virus engulfing us unless the Government is prepared to change its approach from one of mitigation to one of elimination. This requires it to delay lifting the existing restrictions until all four steps in the roadmap have been fully met; to take effective action to fix the test and trace system to stop the spread of the B.1.617.2 and other variants, by handing it over to local public health experts; to make all workplaces and schools Covid-safe; to retain measures such as face coverings and social distancing; and to take effective measures to manage international travel – including free testing and quarantine – based on public health requirements not immigration control.

Inquiry

The Government is hiding behind Cummings’ lack of credibility with the public. The truth has to come out and come out now. Without truth there can be no justice. This means an immediate start to the promised statutory public inquiry, with a short, sharp interim review so that its findings are not delayed for years. The families of the tens of thousands of people who died deserve no less.

Zero Covid statement

Stop the Third Wave!

Einstein is purported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

A shiver went down my spine and I thought of Einstein when Johnson said that the Government would be sticking to its Roadmap and planned to lift all restrictions on 21 June.

What has happened to ‘Data Not Dates’?

When the Roadmap was published back in February, it said:

“Before taking each step, the Government will review the latest data on the impact of the previous step against four tests.

The tests are:

1. The vaccine deployment programme continues successfully.

2. Evidence shows vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated.

3. Infection rates do not risk a surge in hospitalisations. which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS.

4. Our assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new Variants of Concern.”

Test 4 has not been met.

Variant B1617.2 (the “Indian” variant) was designated a Variant of Concern on 7 May (there are rumours that it wasn’t designated sooner so as not to divert attention from the 6 May elections…), and yet Step 3 – the opening up of indoor hospitality and entertainment, and the introduction of the Green List for foreign holidays – went ahead on 17 May. Since then the “Indian” variant has been surging across the UK, particularly in our poorest, most deprived communities. Its speed of transmission is greater than previous variants and, while vaccination seems to be working, 60 percent of the adult population have yet to be fully vaccinated, and the variant is spreading exponentially among younger people.

While young people are less likely to die from Covid, they are highly vulnerable to the devastating and life-changing effects of Long Covid. And they can spread it to their peers and unvaccinated at-risk adults. As the WHO explains: “When a virus is widely circulating in a population and causing many infections, the likelihood of the virus mutating increases. The more opportunities a virus has to spread, the more it replicates – and the more opportunities it has to undergo changes.”

At the moment, the UK’s vaccination programme is in a race against the virus’ ability to spread, mutate and vary to a point where the vaccines may not work. This is why local public health experts are crying out for more vaccines and for permission to vaccinate younger cohorts. Even though the vaccines take time to work, without a functioning Test and Trace system they are this Government’s only defence against Covid.

We are on the cusp of a third wave.

Germany recognises this and has barred UK travellers. Spain and Portugal may soon regret valuing their income from UK tourists more highly than the health of their citizens – understandable though their desire to restart their tourist industry is.

Alongside going ahead with Step 3 and then sticking to their plan to ease all restrictions on 21 June, there has been a marked shift in the Government’s approach. Some rules are being changed to guidance. So, you can only have 30 guests at your UK wedding but you may go on that holiday to an Amber List country – it’s your choice and it will be your fault when you infect your hosts or bring another variant back with you. And not only will you get the blame, you may even get an early morning welcome home knock on the door from Priti Patel rather than a friendly local health worker or mutual aider (she does so love going round with her enforcers, so do give her a hug from us all!).

There is an alternative to waiting for the third wave to hit us – and it doesn’t mean staying in lockdown – although it does mean not throwing those masks away and hanging on a bit longer before hitting the beaches and bars.

That alternative is to pursue a comprehensive elimination strategy, based on tried and tested public health principles, rather than this Government’s chaotic policy of “living with the virus”, with its on-off lockdowns, 4.5 million cases of Covid-19, 127,710 needless deaths (as at 22 May 2021), and untold numbers of people with long-term chronic illnesses.

New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan and countless other countries have pursued this strategy, and it has led to far fewer deaths and much less economic damage. People in these countries are going to cinemas, rock concerts and football matches, enjoying socialising and meeting friends without restrictions.

This is the Zero Covid approach. And it is the surest way to Stop the Third Wave.

We must combine the UK’s mass vaccination programme with

an effective, local and fully funded Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support operation run by the NHS and local authorities, providing full financial support and practical assistance to all those required to shield or self-isolate.

all workplaces, including schools, colleges and public transportation, being made Covid-safe, and certified as safe by trade unions and/or public health authorities; and continued working from home to be encouraged and supported;

continuing personal protection and mitigation measures such as social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing, and good ventilation;

effective measures to address international travel – including free testing and quarantine – based on public health requirements not immigration control;

Quick action to stamp out any new outbreaks.

The scandal of “NHS” Test and Trace epitomises this Government’s approach. Having bunged a staggering £37 billion of taxpayers’ money to the private companies running this joke of an organisation – a body that should be in the vanguard of our defences against the spread of the virus – we now learn that just last week it managed to “lose” the details of hundreds of people infected with the B1617.2 variant, thus helping its spread. Yet Serco’s contract to run this dangerous and expensive failure has just been renewed.

A major problem is that the lack of real financial and practical support provided for those who are asked to self-isolate means that Test and Trace is increasingly disregarded, as are the lateral flow tests we are being asked to administer to ourselves. If you can’t afford not to go to work, what’s the point of getting tested?

And when you do get to work, the odds are that your workplace won’t be Covid-safe, especially if there is no trade union to argue for protection, but you daren’t complain because you could be fired and not rehired. There have been 3,872 Covid outbreaks in workplaces and 4,253 outbreaks in education settings yet not a single employer has been prosecuted for breaching Covid regulations. The lack of enforcement of proper protection for workers by the Health & Safety Executive is just one of the many outrages of the UK’s handling of the pandemic.

George Monbiot has spelt out the tragedy of the Government’s policy towards the UK’s borders: “During the first three months of the pandemic – from 1 January until lockdown on 23 March last year, 18 million people arrived in the UK from abroad. But only 273 of them were obliged to quarantine. By contrast, across the 12 months to March 2020, 23,075 people were thrown into immigration detention centres: prisons for people who have not been convicted of any crime but are suspected of entering – or remaining in – the country without the correct paperwork. Astonishingly and incomprehensibly, on 13 March 2020 the Government dropped any obligation on passengers arriving in this country to self-isolate. As a result, we know that on 31 March 2020, a week into lockdown, there were 895 people in detention and none in official quarantine.

Only on 8 June was quarantine reintroduced, and even then the system was so leaky and ill-enforced that it might as well not have existed. While other nations imposed strict border measures from the outset, preventing widespread infection, an analysis by the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium discovered that, as of 22 May 2020, the virus had been introduced to the UK by travellers on at least 1,300 occasions.”

A year later, things aren’t much better. The stories from returning travellers of the long waits and enforced mingling in the arrival halls of our airports, as well as the recent delay in limiting flights from India, are down to a Home Office and Border Force which would rather persecute and jail refugees and EU citizens than safeguard our collective public health.

Nobody is safe until everybody is safe.

A global pandemic must be fought globally. The UK’s hoarding of vaccines is disgraceful, as is its failure to support vaccine patent waivers and to make substantial donations to Covax. Its cuts to overseas aid are already having a harmful impact on the ability of countries in the global south to protect their populations against the pandemic.

Speedy deployment of vaccines internationally without trade or patent restrictions, funded by developed countries and global corporations, is an essential part of a comprehensive worldwide public health strategy to minimise infections and the mutations/variants they enable.

Labour’s leadership needs to move from supporting the Government’s failed, deadly approach to supporting and advocating the only strategy which can Stop the Third Wave – Zero Covid.

22 May 2021

Scrap Serco’s Test and Trace: fund public health not private profit

Thirty-seven billion pounds. £37,000,000,000. Yes, that’s billion, not million.

That’s how much the government has thrown at the misleadingly named, centralised, outsourced ‘NHS’ Test and Trace operation.

That’s three times the £13 billion allocated to the hugely successful, public sector run vaccination programme.

After 130,000 deaths and three lockdowns, it’s time to kill off Johnson’s ‘world-beating’ demonstration of how not to fight a pandemic and replace it with a system run by professional, locally based, public health experts who know what they are doing.

The last few weeks have seen a stream of revelations about how the Tories have used the cover of the pandemic to enrich themselves and their friends – Cameron’s lobbying for his mate Lex Greensill, Dyson’s texts to Johnson, Hancock’s shares in his sister’s company, the VIP fast lane for firms with Tory connections. In February, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government had broken the law by not publishing contract awards within 30 days. And now Transparency International UK has identified 73 contracts worth more than £3.7 billion – equivalent to 20% of all contracts awarded between February and November of last year – whose award would ordinarily be treated as red flags for possible corruption. 27 PPE or testing contracts worth £2.1 billion were awarded to firms with connections to the Conservative party, it claimed.

But let’s not forget that £37 billion in the flurry of new outrages.

When the pandemic first struck, Public Health England set about doing what the WHO was demanding: ‘Test, test, test’. But as the virus took hold, testing was stopped and the Government decided to set up a brand-new operation – a centralised, outsourcing agency.

All its components – administering tests, processing samples in laboratories, and contact tracing – are contracted to private companies such as Deloitte, Serco, Sitel, Mitie, G4S, and Sodexo. As an example of where the money is all going, a year later 2,500 private sector consultants are still working with ‘NHS’ Test and Trace at an estimated daily rate of at least £1,100 per head.

Cronyism and chumocracy have become watchwords for this government. It is no surprise that ‘NHS’ Test and Trace is run by a Tory baroness, and Serco by a scion of one of the most famous Tory families.

‘NHS’ Test and Trace has been a hideously expensive disaster – from the first failed app to sick families were being told to drive hundreds of miles for a test last summer – and it is time the government admitted that. The availability of tests has improved dramatically but (leaving aside the differential accuracy of PCR and RLF tests) testing on its own is meaningless if it is not followed through. There is little point in getting tested, and no incentive to do so, if you can’t afford to stay off work or keep the kids out of school. Tracing the contacts of positive cases promptly and then supporting all who are required to self-isolate are absolutely essential.

These components are now (quietly) being handed over to some local authorities – the ‘Local 0’ project helps their public health team to contact positive cases at the same time as the case is entered into the national ‘NHS’ Test and Trace system. Practical help and support can then be offered when and where it is really needed.

My home patch of Lambeth was the first London borough, and one of the first in the country, to take over complete contact tracing .

Because they are local, experienced, and steeped in the ethos of the public sector, Lambeth’s teams can quickly locate and contact people to offer support and help. A network of local authority, voluntary and charitable bodies provides support that includes not only food shopping, medication collection, and help with claiming the government’s £500 support grant, but also dog walking and, if appropriate, separate accommodation. In an area of multiple languages and ethnicities, mother tongue speaking contact tracers are integral to the teams.

This kind of positive development is what Zero Covid UK means when we talk about an effective Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support (FTTIS) system being needed to go hand in hand with the vaccination programme and Covid-secure workplaces if we are to eliminate community transmission of the virus.

Those billions still being paid to private companies and consultants must urgently be redirected to the NHS and local authorities so that they can not only set up and expand local contact tracing and support but also receive funding to increase pay and cover budgetary deficits.

Baroness Harding, appointed by Matt Hancock, has now ‘moved on’ to Public Health England’s replacement agency, the UK Health Security Agency. Serco’s contact tracing contract ends on 17 May – and must not be renewed.

Now is the time to demand change.

We Own It and Zero Covid UK are holding a Day of Action on Tuesday 27 April to tell the Government to end Serco’s contract for contact tracing and give the money to the public sector.

Join us in demanding that the government fix contact tracing and scrap Serco. The money should be given to the real NHS and local public health teams.

This article was published in the Morning Star, 26 April 2021

No death is acceptable if it is preventable

Covid-19 has dominated all our lives for the past year, and it’s not going away. 130,000 have died and hundreds of thousands are facing grief, loss and long-term illness. Unless there is a change of strategy, tens of thousands more will die.

Most of the Covid deaths in the UK could have been prevented if Johnson’s government had adopted a different approach – an approach based on elimination rather than containment – the Zero Covid approach.

We cannot and must not accept ‘living with the virus’ any longer. Government advisers admit that such a strategy is likely to involve a further 30,000 to 80,000 deaths.

That’s 200,000 acceptable deaths – 200,000 preventable deaths.

No death is acceptable if it is preventable

Johnson likes to say the government has done everything it could. But if it were serious about preventing deaths, it would at the very least –

properly fund the NHS and its staff,
provide the highest quality PPE,
scrap Serco’s test and failing-to-trace system,
provide full financial and practical support to those required to self-isolate, quarantine or shield,
fund local authorities for the crucial work they are doing,
ventilate classrooms and workplaces and make whatever structural changes are necessary to enable safe social distancing,
provide kids with laptops and broadband,
enforce health and safety laws,
deal with cramped and overcrowded living conditions which allow the virus to keep spreading amongst our poorest communities.

Instead it has boasted of world-beating this and world-beating that, when the only thing world-beating about its approach has been the death toll and crashing economy. It has squandered billions enriching private companies who have failed to deliver – billions which could have been spent addressing the class, racial and gender inequalities, as well as the dire discrimination faced by disabled people, exposed by their response to the pandemic.

The Zero Covid approach is one which values human lives before profit, which values the health of us all before the wealth of the few.

There are many misconceptions about Zero Covid. For starters, it does not mean endless lockdowns. The reverse – it means an end to this cycle of half-hearted on-off lockdowns. It is based on the strategy humanity across the world has learnt to pursue when faced with a pandemic: trace, isolate and support to stop the spread; vaccinate if you can. Why is that so difficult this time around? Climate change means more, not fewer, pandemics in the future. We need to learn the lessons and get it right next time.

Critics say that zero Covid is a fantasy. But it is living with a deadly virus which is the fantasy. No country is ‘livingwith the virus’. But a number have charted a way through the pandemic by pursuing an elimination strategy – driving down community transmission and using local test and trace systems to stop new outbreaks. The UK’s vaccine rollout is vital, but will not end the pandemic on its own, not when the pandemic is global, prone to variants and mutations, and vaccine nationalism is on the rise.

Of course, we can’t totally eradicate the Covid-19 virus – but reducing and aiming to eliminate community transmission is possible – as we can see from New Zealand’s five deaths per one million population and Vietnam’s 0.4 per million, compared to the UK ‘s 1,828 deaths per million, which even beats Brazil and the USA.

Critics like to point out that New Zealand is small. So it is worth noting that Vietnam’s population is 98 million compared to the UK’s 68 million.

In the past week the BBC has reported how Iceland is now virtually Covid-free, with just 20 active cases and 29 deaths. The Guardian in the Tale of Two Islands concluded its report on Taiwan (22 million people, ten deaths, 1,000 documented cases, 0.4 per million) with:

“It all comes down to government clarity and transparency,” said Chen. “You have to let the people know what the government is trying to do.”

But while the lived experience of Sars gave an urgency to Taiwan’s planning, the conclusions drawn were researched and published extensively.

There was nothing stopping the British government, or others, from learning from them in the intervening years. But perhaps because of British exceptionalism, perhaps because other coronavirus epidemics – Sars, Mers – had been contained far from Europe, the UK chose to follow its own deadly path instead.”

It’s never too late to save lives

It’s not too late to urge both Labour and the Government to change their strategy from containment, from living with the virus, to suppression and elimination. Both SAGE and Indie SAGE scientists are already talking about a fourth surge in the autumn hitting the young and unvaccinated if we don’t start getting it right.

Professor Michael Baker, the New Zealand epidemiologist, says – ‘Reaching zero cases doesn’t depend on a country’s size but on strong leadership’.

Real opposition means strong leadership

Labour’s Conference in September may seem a long time away. And it would be great if Labour’s leadership showed strong leadership now by challenging the basis of the Tories’ containment approach to the pandemic by advocating the real alternative.

There have been so many times during the last twelve months where the Johnson government left open goals in its treatment of the pandemic. Labour could have championed education workers and parents fighting for safe schools, could have pressed for the benefit uplift to be extended to all claimants, could have demanded an end to handing out contracts to Serco and other leeches on our NHS, could have demanded a change of approach and strategy.

Instead it is seen as complicit with the Tories’ incompetence and corruption. How else can the Tories’ poll lead and Labour’s ever-sinking popularity be explained? The success of the NHS-led vaccine programmemay be giving a temporary boost to Johnson, but those thousands who have lost family members and friends, who have worked night and day in the most fraught and stressful of circumstances, whose kids have lost their hopes of a future, who have lost jobs, businesses, livelihoods and dreams, they won’t forget. Nor will they forgive either Government or Opposition for their leadership failures.

Covid is the number one priority

Momentum is currently organising a Policy Primary to determine which motions to Conference it should back. It would be unconscionable if this year of all years Labour did not discuss the Covid Pandemic. It has to be the number one priority. And it has to be a discussion based not just on criticising the Tories for doing too little too late or lining their chums’ pockets, but on a real alternative approach based on social solidarity. Anything else is endorsing social murder.

Zero Covid’s Conference motion is below. It not only calls for a change of strategy but also links that to how ecological destruction will undoubtedly result in more lethal and uncontrollable pandemics, which is why a green recovery plan has to go hand in hand with a Zero Covid approach.

Word limits mean much has had to be omitted and the politics of the pandemic are fast moving. We anticipate topical amendments and want CLPs to put similar motions closer to the Labour Party’s closing date of 13th September.

The campaign to beat the pandemic

Voting in the Momentum Policy Primary is not the only way you can support Zero Covid. We are a grassroots activist campaign of individual supporters and affiliated organisations. Our supporters come from a range of political parties or none. Our aim is to build a movement to force UK policy makers to adopt an elimination strategy. Our structure allows for local groups to establish themselves and have a say in the running of the campaign. Coordinating our work centrally are teams of volunteers that cover areas such as social media, science and health advisory, press relations and mobilisation. We are part of the Zero Covid Coalition.

We are currently campaigning on workplace safety, for Serco to be sacked and for local authority public health experts to be funded to run local Track and Trace programmes. We support campaigns such as the People’s Covid Enquiry, the call for an official statutory investigation into the UK government’s response to the pandemic, and the international Call for a People’s Vaccine for patents on the intellectual property rights of vaccines to be waived.

*****

Zero Covid’s Labour Party Conference motion

Title: Covid-19 pandemic

Conference notes:

The appalling loss of lives and livelihoods due to the Tory government’s incompetence, corruption and refusal to adopt and implement effective measures to drive down community transmission and eliminate the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
That this has been exacerbated by a decade of austerity, privatisation and cuts to public services, especially the NHS and local authorities.
That the expensive failure of the outsourced Serco Test and Trace system has contributed to this disaster.
That individuals have been consistently blamed for systemic and policy failures and not provided with sufficient support through decent sick pay, grants, loans, benefits and other wide-ranging assistance in order to be able to self-isolate, shield, work from home and/or home-school.
That climate change and ecological destruction make future pandemics more likely and that the pandemic is a global issue that demands international solidarity.

Conference applauds:

The commitment of the millions of workers and volunteers, in the UK and globally, who have supported their communities, provided dedicated healthcare, and demonstrated scientific and medical brilliance.
The UK’s vaccine programme, rolled out and administered by the NHS and local volunteers.

Conference calls for:

Labour to adopt now and in the event of any future similar pandemics policies aimed at the elimination, rather than the containment, of the spread of the disease, working with trade unions and public health experts.
A forward-looking recovery plan based on the Green New Deal.

This article was published by Labour Hub on 26-03-2021

https://labourhub.org.uk/2021/03/26/real-opposition-means-a-strategy-to-eliminate-covid/

Why Zero Covid?

This is a slightly edited version of my speech to Socialist Health Association London on 9 March 2021. SHAL agreed to affiliate to Zero Covid.

Zero Covid is an elimination strategy supported by many scientists and medics – but at the end of the day it is primarily a political strategy.

Professor Michael Baker, the New Zealand epidemiologist, puts it best – ‘Reaching zero cases doesn’t depend on a country’s size but on strong leadership’.

And he’s not talking about the kind of strong men leaders in various countries who think covid is a form of man flu.

I don’t need to tell you about the UK’s leadership – callous, corrupt and incompetent, and sickeningly proud of this country’s world beating death rate and failed economy.

One that puts the wealth of the few over and above the health of us all.

Yet again we are witnessing another rush to ‘open up from lockdown’ – a lockdown which, despite being much weaker than last year’s, has undoubtedly had a major effect on pushing down infection rates.

Even so the virus is just as prevalent now as it was in mid-October, just two weeks before the November lockdown – and reopening the schools is predicted to push the R number up by between ten to fifteen percent. And you don’t need to be a scientist to understand that the virulence and transmission speed of the UK variant along with the other variants and mutations we are now experiencing will drive infection rates up at a faster speed than before.

The government’s strategy is clear – to place all its bets on the vaccine – and then to ‘live with the virus’.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a major fan and advocate of vaccination – but on its own it can only be part of the story. Because a global pandemic means the whole world has to be vaccinated – and that is going to take some time – even without the nationalistic vaccine wars and patent protectionism we are witnessing.

They admit themselves that such a strategy is likely to involve a further thirty thousand to eighty thousand deaths – on top of the hundred and thirty thousand we have already suffered. In fact Whitty has said today modelling shows a further thirty thousand deaths as lockdown eases.

Two hundred thousand acceptable deaths. Two hundred thousand preventable deaths.

No death can be acceptable if it is preventable.

If the government was serious about preventing deaths not only would they

properly fund the NHS and its staff,
provide the highest quality PPE,
scrap SERCO’S test and failing-to-trace system,
provide full financial and practical support to those required to self-isolate, quarantine or shield,
fund local authorities for the crucial work they are doing,
ventilate classrooms and workplaces and make whatever structural changes are necessary to enable safe social distancing,
provide kids with laptops and broadband,
enforce health and safety laws,
deal with cramped and overcrowded living conditions which allow the virus to keep spreading amongst our poorest communities

– and that’s just for starters –

then, even without a zero covid strategy, it might be possible to take them seriously [and stop calling them murderers].

You might say that all sounds very expensive, but compared to the billions this government has squandered and handed over to private companies we can’t afford NOT to do it, not if we value human lives before profit.

No country is living with the virus. But a number have pursued a strategy of zero covid and are living with its near elimination.

Of course we can’t totally eradicate Covid – but reducing and aiming to eliminate community transmission is possible – as we can see from New Zealand’s five deaths per one million population, Vietnam’s nought point four per million, compared to the UK ‘s one thousand eight hundred and twenty eight deaths per million, which even beats Brazil and the USA.

[Oh – and by the way, Vietnam’s population is 98 million compared to the UK’s 68 million]

Which brings me back to Michael Baker. What it takes is strong leadership and a determination to protect your citizens, all of them, not just your chums and their bank balances.

Zero Covid does not mean endless lockdowns. The reverse – it means an end to this cycle of half-hearted on-off lockdowns. It is based on the strategy humanity has pursued for centuries across the world when faced with a pandemic. Track, trace and isolate to stop the spread – then vaccinate if you can. Why is that so difficult this time round? Climate change means more, not fewer, pandemics in the future. We need to learn the lessons and get it right next time.

It’s not too late to urge both Labour and the Government to change their strategy from containment, from living with the virus, to suppression and elimination. Both SAGE and Indy SAGE scientists are already talking about a fourth surge in the autumn hitting the young and unvaccinated if we don’t start getting it right.

And it’s never too late to save lives.

There’s much more I could say – and I’ve probably left some really important things out – but I’ll stop there.

I’d like to propose SHAL affiliates to the Zero Covid campaign. We are a grassroots independent campaign involving community, trade union and political activists as well as health workers and scientists. We have model motions for Labour Party and Women’s Conference and will happily supply speakers to constituencies and trade unions. And we are having a day of action this coming Saturday which we hope you will support.