LABOUR HUB EDITORS

UK

Campaigners demand to know party policies on Covid-19

By Covid Action

JUNE 14, 2024

Covid-19 has not disappeared. People are still falling sick, being hospitalised and dying from it. Long Covid numbers are increasing, preventing sufferers from working and adding to the number of unemployed and the costs of long-term sickness benefits, and thousands of clinically vulnerable people are still unable to rejoin society and lead ‘normal’ lives.

 For the past two years the Tory Government has treated Covid as though it were no more than a bad cold, removing protections against infection and the means by which new variants and surges can be identified and monitored.

 Speaking on behalf of Covid Action, Joan Twelves says: “Measures to prevent infection will more than pay for themselves and will go a long way to improving the health of the nation.

“The pretence that Covid has gone away has to stop. We are calling on the main political parties to clarify their policies on Covid-19 by answering a series of important questions about infection controls, our right to clean air, indoors and out, data collection, vaccines and Long Covid.”

Covid Action has asked the parties whether they will call on the next Government to:

1.        make Covid an occupational disease, and Long Covid recognised as a disability under equality legislation?

2.        make tests freely available to everyone and restore regular testing of staff and patients in hospitals and care homes?

3.        restore data collection and surveys, such as the ONS survey and other research programmes and projects on the prevalence of Covid-19 and potential new variants of SARS and other viral threats?

4.        follow the example of the Mayor of London and institute a programme of installing air filtration systems in schools, colleges, hospitals and care homes?

5.        provide free booster vaccines for all those who want them?

6.        provide specialist clinics and support for Long Covid sufferers, and a programme of research into its causes?

7.        review the infection prevention and control guidelines?

8.        restore the tasks of testing and tracing any new disease to local authority public health specialists?

9.        increase sick pay?

10.      raise Covid awareness by providing public information that Covid is still here and that it is an airborne disease?

11.      fund not-for-profit research to develop new vaccines and antiviral drugs?

12.      vigorously go after the Covid-profiteers and fraudsters?

13.      ensure that the NHS, public health authorities and other agencies are fully prepared for any new health threats to the population, including being fully stocked with PPE?

Supporters of Covid Action are asking these same questions of candidates standing for election in constituencies across England and Wales.

Covid Action UK is grassroots, activist campaign of individuals and affiliated labour and trade union organisations who came together in November 2020 to challenge the UK government’s then approach to the pandemic. CONTACT US:Email: info@covidaction.uk