Covid: no time to ease off

Submitted by AWL on 18 May, 2021 - 6:33 Author: Martin Thomas
Covid

Several scientists have warned that the lockdown-easing on 17 May, allowing pubs and cafés to reopen indoors, risks new spikes and should have been postponed. Even the Tories hint that the 21 June date for further and almost total easing may be put back.

With good cause. The Economist magazine has just made the first attempt at a comprehensive count of worldwide excess deaths. Ten million. The official figure of Covid deaths, 3.4 million, undercounts the toll especially in countries with poor recording of deaths.

The weekly world Covid death rate is still almost at its highest ever. Chile and the Seychelles have had new infection spikes despite higher vaccination rates than Britain.

A panel of the WHO has concluded that with better preparation, information, and international coordination very early in 2020, the Covid outbreak could have been blocked from being a full pandemic. We still need covid distancing and quarantines. To make those effective, and reduce their social costs, the labour movement must fight for social measures:

• No rushed return to workplaces. Reworking of all workplace safety plans in the light of more transmissible new variants. Workers’ control. Full isolation pay for all; continued furlough.

• Requisition the assets of Big Pharma, especially the vaccine patents and the know-how to expand new vaccine production facilities. Vaccinate worldwide!

• Take social care into the public sector, and give care workers NHS-level pay and conditions.

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