As the UK’s ability to conduct coronavirus tests crawls questionably upward and his promise of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April looks ever more a perverse fairy tale, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and his boss are rightly being criticised for their lack of preparation and their failure to act quickly when the opportunity was there and the need was unmissable.
But the arrogance, complacency and incompetence that underlies the Tories’ reckless and lazy approach to what has become a horrific national crisis was plain in Hancock’s statement to the House of Commons more than two months ago.
A blasé and pompous Hancock told MPs that:
- the threat to the UK was ‘low’
- the UK was leading the world on testing
- the country was ‘well prepared’ and ‘well equipped’ to deal with ‘these types of outbreaks’
- that clinicians were ready for diagnosis of the disease and for infection control
The UK’s testing capacity, which Hancock and Boris Johnson failed to build up until the crisis was already here – and even now – is a sick joke compared to countries like Germany and South Korea, which actually prepared in advance and followed World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance.
Infection control is even worse, with NHS staff left treating infected patients for weeks with utterly inadequate protective equipment and infected care home residents sent home from hospital to infect others just as vulnerable – entirely in line with the lethal 'herd immunity' strategy the government has supposedly abandoned.
Meanwhile, NHS staff who blow the whistle on the dangers, shortages and failures face disciplinary action as health bosses try to cover up the scale of the government’s guilt and incompetence.
Nobody in the UK could credibly argue that the UK was ever ‘well prepared’ or well equipped’ – and the mere fact that Hancock could even say ‘these types of outbreaks’ shows how desperately he had failed to grasp the scale of the threat, in spite of clear warnings from China and the WHO.
Even now, the Tories are ignoring WHO appeals to ‘test, test, test‘ as the only way to defeat the pandemic.
Leading medic Dr Kailash Chand called today for an independent public inquiry into the Tories’ handling of the threat and ensuing crisis. This video should be exhibit A – but criminal negligence and manslaughter charges for thousands of avoidable deaths would be more appropriate.
Source: SKWAWKBOX - 8/4/2020
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Yesterday(11/4/2020), the Guardian reported that hospitals across England are running out of surgical gowns needed to treat people with Covid-19. Senior NHS leaders in London said they are 'alarmed' and that the lack of gowns is a "disaster in waiting for staff health." Surgical gowns are vital to stop staff getting the disease while performing procedures on infected patients. The Guardian claimed that some hospitals are buying boiler suits from DIY shops or wearing ponchos, as replacements. a lack of gowns, aprons, and facemasks, and visors, have been implicated in the rising death toll from Covid-19 among NHS doctors, nurses, and other staff. NHS England and ministers, insist that shortages of 'Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), is due to "local distribution issues" rather than inadequate supplies.
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