Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations are once again on the rise in Britain, less than a month after the government began the process of ending all public health measures (pejoratively termed ‘restrictions’) to control the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It is at this stage unknown whether this is being driven by the 30% more transmissible subvariant of Omicron BA.2. The UK recorded over 226,000 new cases on 21 March 2022. In that week there were over 600,000 cases, a rise of 37% over the previous week. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that 4.26 million people, or 1 in 15 people, were infected in the week ending 19 March. In England and Wales 6.4% of the population, or 1 in 16, were infected and in Scotland it was 9% of the population, or 1 in 11. CHARLES CHINWEIZU reports.
Alarmingly, the most vulnerable age group, the over 70s, has also seen a rise in infections and hospitalisations. There are almost 800 deaths a week in the UK and yet Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid says there is ‘no cause for concern’. Over 13,000 people in 2022 so far have died from what the ruling class media assured us was a ‘mild’ disease. Both the British Medical Association (BMA) and the scientific advisers that feed into SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) have warned that ‘ending testing and isolation could lead to a return to rapid epidemic growth of the virus’, which is exactly what is happening now. In March 2022 it was announced that SAGE would no longer regularly meet to discuss the coronavirus pandemic.
The British government’s aim throughout the pandemic has been to protect the capitalist profits of the economy, and to protect the wealth and privileges of the elites. The Labour Party has been determined not to rock the boat by opposing the government’s criminal handling of the pandemic. Labour’s priority has been to return to power.
On 27 January the government scrapped its so-called Plan B measures making the British economy the most open for capitalism in Europe. Then on 21 February it published its report Living with Covid-19 which assumes Covid-19 will become endemic ie ‘steady and predictable’ and that once it does, ‘Covid-19 will become a predominantly winter seasonal illness’. The plan is based on four ‘principles’: ‘living with Covid-19’, ‘protecting the most vulnerable’ (by vaccination and testing), ‘maintaining resilience’ (by vaccination and testing) and ‘securing innovation in life sciences’ ie giving billions to Big Pharma to produce vaccines and tests. Everything is underpinned by vaccination. The only ‘principle’ operating here is maintaining capitalist profits at the expense of public health with the poorest sections of the working class bearing the brunt.
Living with Covid-19
On 21 February, government ‘guidance’ for staff and students in education and childcare settings to undertake twice-weekly asymptomatic testing was dropped. Then on 24 February, the government replaced the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test with ‘advice to stay at home and avoid contact’. Testing to leave isolation on day 5 is optional. Routine contact tracing was also scrapped. Close contacts no longer have to test either. Workers will not be ‘legally obliged to tell their employers when they need to self-
isolate’. Obviously any worker who does can be denied leave or pay to self-isolate, forcing them back to work. All travel restrictions, passenger locator forms, quarantine hotels or testing of arrivals were scrapped on 18 March. On 24 March, self-isolation support payments such as provisions within Statutory Sick Pay and Employment and Support Allowance were also ended. Only one in eight workers were eligible for this support anyway, and 80% of those who applied were rejected. The lack of financial support was the main reason only 20% of people who tested positive were able to isolate during the pandemic. By 1 April the government will:
- ‘Remove the health and safety requirement for every employer to explicitly consider COVID-19 in their risk assessments.’
- ‘No longer provide free universal symptomatic and asymptomatic testing for the general public in England.’
- The ‘plan’ is music to the ears of British businesses and guarantees profits at the expense of workers’ health.
No more testing
Population-wide surveillance testing will also end as the government cuts funding for these schemes: the React study (Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission) – which randomly tests about 150,000 people across England each month to see how many are infected with coronavirus – will be scrapped at the end of March, and no further data will be collected beyond that point. The React study discovered the proportion of asymptomatic spread in the UK. Funding is also being withdrawn from: the Zoe Covid symptom study; the Vivaldi study which monitors infections in care homes; the CoMix social contacts survey; and the Siren study which monitors health workers, a group highly susceptible to multiple infection. Siren was crucial in discovering research that guided policy, such as the two-week minimum time required after vaccination before protection kicks in. Vital information will be lost if Britain stops tracking Covid-19 in healthcare workers. The weekly Covid-19 infection survey run by the ONS, which measures both infection rates and antibodies in the same 180,000 people in UK households, is to be scaled back to using a smaller sample size. The government claims funding will continue but the direction of travel is clear, and it’s only a matter of time before it too is axed.
Class war
It is almost impossible now to access free lateral flow tests, and high street chemists Boots are planning to sell tests for a staggering £6 each. With no restrictions on prices these pharmacies and supermarkets can charge whatever they like, leading to skyrocketing costs. With no legal requirement to isolate, no financial support and no free tests, there would be no point in getting tested. Only those who can afford to get tested and isolate if positive will do so. This will allow the virus to spread unchecked through the population, become a disease of the poor and dominate in deprived areas widening already stark inequalities.
Covid-19 deaths and hospitalisations in England were starkly stratified by race and class, exposing and exacerbating inequalities as documented by the Covid-19 Health Inequalities Monitoring for England (CHIME) tool:
- Mortality from March 2020 to December 2021 was 446 deaths per 100,000 people in the most deprived areas of England, as opposed to 194 deaths per 100,000 people in the least deprived.
- Hospitalisations from March 2020 to November 2021 were 1,050 per 100,000 people in the most deprived areas, compared to 397 per 100,000 in the least deprived.
- By ethnicity:
- There were 1,496 hospitalisations per 100,000 of black/black British people and 1,460 hospitalisations of Asian/Asian British people compared to 525 hospitalisations per 100,000 white people from March 2020 to November 2021.
- There were 525 deaths per 100,000 of Asian/Asian British people and 521 deaths of black/black British people per 100,000 compared to 253 deaths per 100,000 white people from March 2020 to December 2021.
- Self-reported Long Covid, estimated to affect 1.52 million people, was more prevalent (3%) in the most deprived areas of the UK than in the least deprived areas (2%) by January 2022 according to the ONS.
- 73% of over 18s are fully vaccinated with a booster in the least deprived areas, whilst 54% are boosted in the most deprived areas.
- 70% of 12-15 year olds in the least deprived areas have received at least one dose of a vaccine compared to 36% in the most deprived areas.
This last statistic is from the government’s Living with Covid-19 report. So they are aware that their policies disproportionately affect the poorest sections of the working class and are pushing ahead anyway.
Labour Party collusion
On 8 January 2022, Wes Streeting, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responded to the government’s scrapping of free lateral flow tests with: ‘This would be the wrong decision at the wrong time’. Surely there is no ‘right time’ for such an appalling decision? When the government refused to take action to curb infection rates after the emergence of Omicron, Wes Streeting responded on 27 December 2021: ‘After a difficult 2021, people will be relieved to see no new restrictions ahead of the new year …’ Wes Streeting has been completely useless to the working class as Shadow Health Secretary.
On 16 January 2022, the Labour party released its own ten-point plan, Living well with Covid-19. Among other meaningless proposals are: ‘Fix sick pay’; ‘Play our part in vaccinating the world’; ‘Prioritise children’s learning’; ‘Launch exercises to learn lessons’; ‘Publish a “road map” for future decision-making’.
It is a typically vacuous plan that ignores the needs of working class people. Where is the demand for free and readily accessible testing? Or the demand to end the privatisation of test and trace? Where is the demand for financial support for people to isolate or support to enable the clinically vulnerable to shield? Or the demands for mask-wearing in indoor spaces, such as schools, or demands that healthcare workers get free, high-grade medical masks such as FFP3 masks, made available to them? The government is providing 9,000 HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) units to the ‘small number of educational establishments where poor ventilation could not be quickly rectified’ but there are 32,000 schools in the UK, 24,000 in England alone. Labour could have demanded HEPA units in all schools.
Concrete demands are needed: not empty slogans. Not ‘fix sick pay’ but ‘pay workers £800 to isolate’ (the £500 previous payment was below the minimum wage). Not ‘play our part in vaccinating the world’ but ‘waive vaccine patents’. What about child vaccination? Millions of children remain unvaccinated. 18 children died of Covid-19 in January 2022, the highest monthly total since the pandemic began. Even Labour Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has given up the pretence of ‘following the science’.
Covid-19 will not become endemic
According to Raina MacIntyre, on the World Health Organisation’s technical advisory group on Covid-19 vaccine composition, Covid-19 ‘will never be endemic because it is an epidemic disease and always will be. The key difference is spread. As an epidemic disease, SARS-CoV-2 will always find the unvaccinated, undervaccinated or people with waning immunity and spread rapidly in those groups. Typically, true epidemic infections are spread from person to person, the worst being airborne transmission, and display a waxing and waning pattern such as we have already seen with multiple waves of SARS-CoV-2. Cases rise rapidly over days or weeks, as we have seen with Alpha, Delta and Omicron. No truly endemic disease – malaria, for example – does this.’ She warns that scrapping testing and tracing, ‘pillars of epidemic control …[puts us] on a runaway train coming off the rails. Testing allows us to find infected people and isolate them so they do not infect others’ (‘A pandemic of denial’, The Saturday Paper, 15 January 2022).
Throughout the pandemic the British government, with the active collusion of the Labour Party, has prioritised the economy at the expense of public health, and minimised the seriousness of the disease. Neither Labour nor the Tories have ever cared about the working class, ethnic minorities, poor or disabled people who daily expose themselves to a dangerous virus as they enter workplaces and public transport.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 287, April/May 2022
