Tuesday, May 05, 2020

Jose Guadalupe Posada
HAPPY CINQUE DE MAYO
LOVED BY SURREALISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES AROUND THE GLOBE

#SoyEncore y queremos compartir contigo algo acerca de la historia de las Catrinas y su creador José Guadalupe Posada

Jose Guadalupe Posada, was a lithographer and print maker in Mexico's pre-Revolution times; he is best known for the creation of La Calaca Garbancera, that later became La Catrina, the iconic skeleton lady used during the Day of the Dead celebrations and many folk art styles. Posada is considered by scholars the father of Mexican modern art.

Jose Guadalupe Posada's Work and Life


Posada was born on February 2, 1852 in Aguascalientes, a city in central Mexico, to Petra Aguilar a homemaker and German Posada a baker, both illiterate.

He received elemental education from his brother Jose Cirilo, 12 years his senior who was an elementary school teacher.

Jose Cirilo urged him to work at a kinder garden where Posada spent most of the time drawing portraits of the children and illustrations about the subjects taught to them.

Because his drawing ability was evident he pursued education at the art academy of Aguascalientes which he attended for a brief time.

In 1868 Posada began working at José Trinidad Pedroza's printing house, one of the best in the country.

Pedroza taught Posada the printmaking techniques for lithography and engraving on wood and metal. Three years later, at age 19, Posada was head cartoonist of El Jicote (The Wasp)
a critical newspaper edited by Pedroza with whom Posada became friends and later business partner.

With Posada's help Pedroza opened a second printing house in Leon, Guanajuato. There Jose Guadalupe got married in 1875 to Maria de Jesus Vela with whom he had a child who died at a young age.

Posada did very well illustrating newspapers, magazines, books and commercial items such as cigarette and match boxes and eventually dissolved the partnership with Pedroza. In 1888 a cataclysmic flood struck the city forcing Posada to move to Mexico City.




Right after he arrived to Mexico City he published a series of drawings in the weekly newspaper La Juventud Literaria (The Literary Youth) which were presented by Ireneo Paz with the following introduction:

"Our readers ought to appreciate the imagination of Jose Guadalupe Posada who has drawn these small drawings in his free time. We are very pleased to praise who deserves to be praised and we guess he will become the best Mexican cartoonist. We are waiting for his masterpiece and the praising he will receive from the press and the smart people. Until then we congratulate this young artist and wish him to continue on this path."

Posada opened a humble workshop where he engraved historic scenes, recipe books, news, songbooks, board games, stories, love letters, religious images, etc. The Mexican capital had then 350,000 inhabitants, 80% of them illiterate, therefore illustrations were a great way to communicate.



Posada's most prolific and important work was done in the printing shop of publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, where he began as a staff artist around 1890 and soon became the publisher's chief artist.

There Posada met Manuel Manila, engraver who taught him how to create a rich shade of grays and a more precise and delicate drawing. Posada then abandoned lithography and began to work first with engraving on type metal and later with relief etching on zinc which gave him more flexibility.

Vanegas Arroyo, poet Constancio Suárez and Posada teamed up to publish cheap one-page leaflets with brightly printed, graphics that reported the news and social issues of the day.


They created the calaveras tradition, satirical rhymes illustrated with skulls and skeletons that usually refer to the hypothetic death circumstances of a politician or celebrity. Thanks to Posada's illustrations these verses became an economical success. It was in this gender that Posada created La Calaca Garbancera later known as La Catrina.

He described with originality the spirit of the Mexicans: the political matters, daily life, the terror for the end of the century and for the end of the world, besides the natural disasters, the religious beliefs and popular horror stories; a tireless worker he made 15,000 engravings during his life.

Jose Guadalupe Posada died a widower and without issue on January 20, 1913; he was buried in a common grave at the Dolores cemetery in Mexico City.


Posada, Precursor of Mexican Modern Art

Scholars and artists in Mexico and abroad consider Posada the precursor of Mexican modern art:

Diego Rivera deemed Posada his artistic father and compared him to Goya and Callot, he dedicated him his mural Sunday Evening's Dream, that depicts Posada in the center of the masterpiece holding hands with La Calaca Garbancera, who Rivera named La Catrina.

Painter Jose Clemente Orozco claimed that watching Posada working in at his workshop awoke him to the art of painting.

Mexican poet Octavio Paz, Nobel Prize winner, described his technique like a minimum of lines and a maximum of expression and said about him: "By birthright Posada belongs to expressionism but unlike most expressionists he never took himself seriously".


Posada's Museum in Aguascalientes

Painter, muralist and engraver Luis Seoane said about Posada: "Mexico, who has the most beautiful history in America, the most extraordinary monuments built before and after the Spanish Colony, the most rebellious blood and the weirdest talents has too with Jose Guadalupe Posada the greatest engraver in America, deeply Mexican thus highly universal"

Historian and museographer Fernando Gamboa wrote about him in 1944: "Jose Guadalupe Posada is a popular artist in the deepest and highest sense of the word; popular because of his humble origin; popular, because of the definite class feeling he brings into each of his works; popular, because he was not an artist without antecedents, a phenomenon foreign to the world in which he lived, but rather the outburst of the feelings of a striving people; popular, because of the way he studied and lived in direct contact with life and the way in which he conscientiously listened to the demands of the Mexican people."


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FOX NEWS STATE MEDIA SOUNDS LIKE RT RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA

Japan will draw up plans for potential UFO encounters, report says

Chris Ciaccia

© Provided by FOX News

After the Pentagon officially released videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena," Japan's Defense Ministry will draw up plans for any potential encounters with UFOs, according to a Japanese media report.

Nippon reports the government agency will "consider procedures to respond to, record and report encounters, but the unknown nature of such objects may confuse Self-Defense Forces pilots, including those of F-15 fighter jets."

Defense Minister Taro Kono noted the country's SDF pilots have yet to encounter UFOs, but protocols are being established "to cover the possibility," the report added.

'UFOs ARE REAL,' BLINK-182 FOUNDER SAYS

Fox News has reached out to the Defense Ministry with a request for comment.

The news comes just one week after the Pentagon officially released unclassified footage that showed "unidentified aerial phenomena" captured by Navy aircraft. The footage had circulated in the public for years.

"After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena," said Pentagon spokesperson Sue Go

Japan will draw up plans for potential UFO encounters, report says

"DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” Gough added. “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’”

FORMER US DEFENSE OFFICIAL: WE KNOW UFOS ARE REAL - HERE'S WHY THAT'S CONCERNING

After the videos were released, the head of The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) and former Blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge said "UFOs are real" in a now-deleted tweet.

Former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the footage "scratches the surface of research and materials" made available by the Pentagon.

The videos, known as "FLIR1,” “Gimbal” and “GoFast,” were originally released to the New York Times and to TTSA.

The first video of the unidentified object was taken on Nov. 14, 2004, and shot by the F-18's gun camera. The second video was shot on Jan. 21, 2015, and shows another aerial vehicle with pilots commenting on how strange it is. The third video was also taken on Jan. 21, 2015, but it is unclear whether the third video was of the same object or a different one.

In December 2017, Fox News reported that the Pentagon had secretly set up a program to investigate UFOs at the request of Reid.
Top U.S. general: 'We don't know' if coronavirus emerged from Chinese lab
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley testifies before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on "Department of Defense Budget Posture on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 4, 2020.  REUTERS/Tom Brenner
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley testifies before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on "Department of Defense Budget Posture on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 4, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. general said on Tuesday it was still unknown whether the coronavirus emerged from a wet market in China, a laboratory or some other location, but reaffirmed the U.S. view that it was probably not man-made.

“Did it come out of the virology lab in Wuhan? Did it occur in a wet market there in Wuhan? Did it occur somewhere else? And the answer to that is: We don’t know,” Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference, adding the U.S. government was looking into it.

The remarks stood in contrast to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assessment on Sunday that there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the new coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory.
Special Report: In shielding its hospitals from COVID-19, Britain left many of the weakest exposed

LONDON (Reuters) - On a doorstep in the suburbs of north London, three-year-old Ayse picked up a tissue to wipe away her grandmother’s tears - tears for one more victim of the virus.
Ayse Mehmet, whose daughter Sonya Kaygan died from coronavirus disease (COVID-19), has tears wiped by her three-year-old granddaughter, also named Ayse, at her home in Enfield, Britain, April 27, 2020. Picture taken April 27, 2020.  REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
Ayse Mehmet, whose daughter Sonya Kaygan died from coronavirus disease (COVID-19), has tears wiped by her three-year-old granddaughter, also named Ayse, at her home in Enfield, Britain, April 27, 2020. Picture taken April 27, 2020. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls


The little girl was waiting for her mum, Sonya Kaygan. Her grandmother hadn’t broken the news that Kaygan, 26, who worked at a nearby care home, was dead, one of over 100 frontline health workers killed by the coronavirus in Great Britain.

The grandmother, also called Ayse, spoke through sobs. “Why? Why?” she repeated. Why couldn’t she visit the hospital to say her goodbyes? Why did so many die in her daughter’s workplace? At least 25 residents since the start of March, of whom at least 17 were linked to the coronavirus. It was one of the highest death tolls disclosed so far in a care home in England. And why did Kaygan and her colleagues resort to buying face masks on Amazon a month ago, protection that arrived only after she was in hospital?

A Reuters investigation into Kaygan’s case, the care home where she worked, and the wider community in which she lived provides an intimate view of the frontline of Britain’s war on the coronavirus. It exposes, too, a dangerous lag between promises made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and the reality on the ground.

Even as the government was promising to protect the elderly and vulnerable from the deadly virus, local councils say they didn’t have the tools to carry out the plan, and were often given just hours to implement new government instructions.

Policies designed to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed pushed a greater burden onto care homes. With hospitals given priority by the government, care homes struggled to get access to tests and protective equipment. The elderly were also put at potentially greater risk by measures to admit only the sickest for hospital treatment and to clear out as many non-acute patients as possible from wards. These findings are based on documents from government agencies seen by Reuters, interviews with five leaders of local authorities and eight care home managers.

It is too early to reach final conclusions about the wisdom of these policies. Still, staff and managers of many care homes say they believe the British government made a crucial early mistake: It focused too much attention on protecting the country’s National Health Service at the expense of the most vulnerable in society, among them the estimated 400,000 mostly elderly or infirm people who live in care homes across Britain.

The government summed up that policy in the slogan “Protect the NHS.” The approach gave the country’s publicly-funded hospitals priority over its care homes. A UK government spokesman defended the strategy. “This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided by the best scientific advice.”

The effects of this approach have been felt desperately in Elizabeth Lodge, in Enfield, north London, where Kaygan worked.

The first coronavirus test of a resident of the Lodge only took place on April 29. That was 34 days after the first suspected case at the home, said Andrew Knight, chief executive of residential services at CareUK, a private company which operates the home. It was also 14 days after Matt Hancock, the UK health secretary, pledged tests would be available to “everyone who needs one” in a care home.

“The government’s response on testing has come way too late to have any meaningful effect on keeping the virus out of our homes,” said Knight, the CareUK executive, in a statement to Reuters.

So far, at least 32,300 people have died in Britain from the coronavirus, the highest toll in Europe, according to official UK data processed by 2 May. Out of those deaths, more than 5,890 were registered as occurring in care homes in England and Wales by April 24, the latest date available. These figures don’t include care home residents who were taken to hospital and died there.

Many care home providers believe the figures understate the number of deaths among care home residents because, in the absence of testing, not all are being captured. During the 10 weeks prior to the outbreak, including the height of the flu season, an average of 2,635 people died each week in care homes in England and Wales. By April 24, that weekly death toll had risen to 7,911. According to Reuters calculations, the pandemic has resulted in at least 12,700 excess deaths in care homes.

“I think the focus early on was very much on the acute sector,” or urgent hospital treatment, “and ensuring hospitals were able to respond in an effective way,” said Graeme Betts, acting chief executive of Birmingham City Council, which oversees the UK’s second-biggest city. “And I think early on care homes didn’t get the recognition that perhaps they should have.”

Helen Wildbore, director of the relatives and residents association, a national charity supporting families of people in residential care, said while it was right for the initial focus to be on protecting the NHS, “I think it has taken too long for the government to turn its attention” to vulnerable people outside hospital. “I think it’s fair to say that the sector has felt like an afterthought for quite a long time.”

Jeremy Hunt, a former Conservative Party health secretary and now chairman of the House of Commons health select committee, advocated banning visits to care homes by friends and family from early March, advice that wasn’t followed. Speaking to Reuters, he drew a parallel between the UK’s response to the coronavirus and the way it deals with peak winter demand for hospital services.

“What happens with any NHS winter crisis is the focus of attention immediately switches to the hospitals and dominates the system’s thinking,” he said. “Many people in the social care sector told me exactly the same thing happened with COVID-19.”

The government spokesman said protecting the elderly and most vulnerable members of society had always been a priority, “and we have been working day and night to battle coronavirus by delivering a strategy designed to protect our NHS and save lives.”
THE COCOON

Born in Northern Cyprus in 1993, Sonya Kaygan had come to the UK after studying English. She settled in Enfield, a north London borough of 334,000 people with a large community of Turkish origin, and one particularly hard-hit by the virus pandemic.

Kaygan lived with her mother and together they looked after her child. Both worked in different care homes: She worked night shifts and her mother worked the day shift. Kaygan’s monthly wages for three or four weekly 12-hour shifts added up to a take-home pay of about £1,500 - just short of the monthly rent of their home.

By the time a “lockdown” was imposed by the prime minister on March 23, the virus was spreading fast and Kaygan was beginning to feel sick. “She started feeling a bit uncomfortable,” her uncle Hasan Rusi said. “She had a temperature and was coughing. It might have been a cold, it might be a virus.”

Established plans drawn up by the government for dealing with a flu pandemic had always been clear that care homes could be a place for infection to spread. But on February 25, Public Health England, a government agency overseeing healthcare, stated it “remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.”

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The guidance was widely reproduced on care home websites and stayed in force until March 13. It meant that few care homes restricted visits and few families withdrew their relatives from homes. No plan was put in place for testing staff. A government spokesman said that advice “accurately reflected the situation at the time when there was a limited risk of the infection getting into a care home.”

On March 12, the government shifted from what it termed a “contain” to a “delay” phase, after the World Health Organisation declared an international pandemic. The UK now focused efforts on mitigating the spread of virus through the general population, allowing “some kind of herd immunity” to develop, as the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, explained on BBC radio on March 13. But, said Vallance, “we protect those who are most vulnerable to it.”

David Halpern, a psychologist who heads a behavioural science team - once nicknamed the “nudge unit” - advising the UK government, had expanded on the idea in a separate media interview on March 11. As the epidemic grew, he said, a point would come “where you’ll want to cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don’t catch the disease.”

Nonetheless, Reuters interviews with five leaders of large local authorities and eight care home managers indicate that key resources for such a cocoon approach were not in place.

There weren’t adequate supplies of protective equipment, nor lists of vulnerable people, they said. National supply chains for food were not identified, nor was there a plan in place to supply medicines, organise volunteers, or replace care staff temporarily off sick. Above all, those interviewed said, there was no plan for widespread testing in vulnerable places like care homes or prisons, let alone an infrastructure to deliver it.

On March 23, Johnson announced another shift in strategy, replacing the mitigate-plus-cocoon approach with a broader lockdown. Schools, pubs and restaurants were shuttered, sport cancelled and everyone was told to stay at home.

For local leaders, caring for the most vulnerable became increasingly challenging. Typically, they said, new plans were announced in an afternoon national press conference by a government minister, with instructions to implement them, sometimes the next day, arriving by email to councils later that night. Ministerial promises, handed off to the councils, included drawing up a “shield list” of the most vulnerable, delivering food to them and organising and delivering prescription medicines. Even plans for using volunteers were announced nationally, without taking account of volunteer infrastructures that many councils had in place.

“From our vantage point, it sometimes looked like policy made up on the hoof,” said Jack Hopkins, leader of Lambeth Council in south London, an early hotspot for the virus outbreak. Local councils knew they had to act quickly, but there was no dialogue about how things should happen. “It felt very much like government by press release, with local government left to pick up the pieces,” Hopkins said.

It was the same experience in Birmingham, which was also hit hard by the virus. Betts, the council’s chief executive, wants to avoid dishing out criticism in a situation that is “new for everyone.” But, he said, “it did make it quite challenging from a local authority perspective, when, you know, the prime minister says at 5 pm or 6 pm that something’s going to happen. Eleven o’clock or midnight you get some guidance on it, and you’re meant to be off and running in the next day.”

The most acute problem identified locally early on was the shortage of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for NHS and care home staff. Yet Jenny Harries, England’s deputy chief medical officer, declared on March 20 that there was a “perfectly adequate supply of PPE” for care workers and the supply pressures have been “completely resolved.”

Five days later, Johnson told parliament every care home worker would receive the personal protective equipment they needed “by the end of the week.” This didn’t happen, and more than a month later, the government’s chief medical officer conceded publicly that shortages remained.

According to Nesil Caliskan, leader of Enfield Council, early statements that local shortages were caused by distribution difficulties proved to be a “downright lie.” The government simply didn’t have enough kit, she said.

The government didn’t respond directly to claims that it gave false assurances or insufficient time and support to councils to implement ministers’ instructions. A spokesman said an alliance of the NHS, industry and the armed forces had built a “giant PPE distribution network almost from scratch.” Councils had been supported with £3.2 billion in extra funding to support their pandemic response, he said, and 900,000 parcels of food have been delivered to vulnerable people.

Three days into the lockdown, on 26 March, the nation was urged to stand at their doorstep or window on a Thursday evening and applaud the NHS. Boris Johnson, by now already infected himself, led the cheering on the first occasion.

For some workers in Enfield, the chants left them uneasy. Working 12 hours shifts for barely £9 per hour, below the non-statutory London Living Wage of £10.75, they wondered if those cheers for caregivers were also meant for them.

“I’m one of them,” one care home employee, who asked not to be named, recalls telling her 12-year-old daughter as her neighbours clapped. The daughter teased her: “Oh, Mummy, they don’t talk about you. They talk about the NHS. Mum, do you work for the NHS?”

The caregiver replied: “No. But it’s the same. We care for people.”

The caregiver was one of three workers who recounted their experiences at an Enfield care home run by a firm called Achieve Together. Each described how, after a patient was sent to hospital on March 13 and confirmed to have the coronavirus, staff were issued with thin paper masks. After a fortnight, staff were told the masks should be saved for dealing with patients with symptoms, and they were taken away. And although several staff developed symptoms and had to isolate, no tests were available. A spokesperson for Achieve Together said staff had access to “more than sufficient supplies of PPE, including face masks and face shields, which are supplied and worn directly in line with Government advice.”

One night, caring for a resident with a lung infection who hadn’t been tested, she’d worn a thin blue surgical mask as she performed close-up procedures like feeding him and brushing his teeth.

The day she spoke to Reuters, April 24, health secretary Matt Hancock had reiterated to the BBC that tests were available for care workers. But for now, none was available for this care worker. Her only option was a drive-through centre, but she had no car.

“I want to be checked and really want to be checked as soon as possible,” she said. “If I had the choice.”

The spokesperson for Achieve Together described the health and wellbeing of residents and staff as “our absolute priority.” Staff and residents were tested “when the Government made testing available.” The company did not specify when those tests took place. It declined to comment on details of the home, citing a need to protect patient privacy.

AN INVISIBLE TRAIL

Kaygan’s workplace, the Elizabeth Lodge, in a leafy Enfield suburb, was built in the grounds of two former hospitals of infectious diseases. It is operated by CareUK, a large privately owned healthcare provider, and normally home to about 90 residents, looked after by 125 staff.

The borough has been hit hard by the coronavirus, with Enfield Council recording outbreaks in at least 42 out of 82 care homes, according to the council. The council and the Care Quality Commission, which regulates the sector, declined to disclose individual death tolls, citing privacy.

Elizabeth Lodge, according to several people with direct knowledge, was one of two Enfield homes most savagely stricken by the virus. The other, these people said, is Autumn Gardens. A senior manager at Autumn Gardens, which is privately owned, declined to comment.

Determining how Kaygan and so many residents at Elizabeth Lodge and other homes became infected will be hard. That is partly because, as Reuters has previously reported, as the outbreak began Britain had no plan for widespread testing for the virus once it started spreading in the community.

The Lodge’s management says it hasn’t identified the source of the outbreak there. The home began cutting down on visitors from the start of March, with almost all non-emergency visits barred from March 17.

“At this point anyone coming into the home, including team members and essential health care professionals, had their temperatures checked and went through a health screening questionnaire,” CareUK said in a statement to Reuters.

Kaygan’s last day of work was Friday, March 20th, and she called in sick the following week.

On Sunday, March 22, Mother’s Day in England, Kaygan popped round to drop off a bunch of flowers to two relatives, Kenan and his wife Ozlem, who helped bring her up as a child. They spoke on the doorstep. “She told us she had to go back to work. But I was adamant she should stay at home,” Kenan said. The day after, Johnson announced the nationwide lockdown.

According to the Lodge’s management, none of the residents displayed symptoms until March 26, in the home’s York wing. This was six days after Kaygan last worked, and 11 days after she had last worked in the York wing.

Across Enfield care homes, 48 cases of COVID-19 had been identified by March 27 and at least two people had died of the disease. By then all homes had essentially banned all visitors.

So how did infection take hold in care homes?

According to several care home managers, a key route for infection was opened up by an NHS decision taken in mid-March, as Britain geared up for the pandemic, to transfer 15,000 patients out of hospitals and back into the community, including an unspecified number of patients to care homes. These were not only patients from general wards. They included some who had tested positive for COVID-19, but were judged better cared for outside hospital.

In a plan issued by the NHS on March 17, care homes were exhorted to assist with national priorities. “Timely discharge is important for individuals so they can recuperate in a setting appropriate for rehabilitation and recovery – and the NHS also needs to discharge people in order to maintain capacity for acutely ill patients,” the plan said.

A Department of Health guidance note dated April 2 and published online further stated that “negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.”

Jamie Wilson, a former NHS dementia specialist and founder of Hometouch, which provides care to people in their own homes, said that, based on his discussions with colleagues in the industry, he believes that care homes across the country had taken dozens of patients at risk of spreading the infection. While noting he wasn’t aware of specific cases, he described what he called an egregious and reckless policy “of sending COVID positive patients back into care homes and knowing that it’s so infectious a disease.”

The UK government didn’t respond directly to the question of whether discharges from hospitals had put the vulnerable at risk. But a spokesman said enhanced funding, testing and quarantine procedures should address those concerns.

One NHS infectious diseases consultant, who manages COVID-19 patients, said sending people sick with the coronavirus back to a care home could, in many cases, be the best thing for the patient, provided they could be cared for in the right way. Ideally, she said, all patients should be tested before transfer, and quarantined for up to a fortnight.

The problem was that most patients had not been tested for COVID-19, and care homes have few facilities to quarantine new arrivals.

In Birmingham, over 300 people were discharged into care homes from the start of March, “which is significantly higher than normal,” said council chief executive Betts. In Enfield, 30 patients were sent to care homes, about average, according to Enfield Council. One care manager in the borough, who manages several homes, said some of those transfers caused concern.

This manager recalled that, shortly after Johnson announced the lockdown, she had an argument with officials at a nearby hospital who wanted her to take back a resident who had been treated for sepsis. The hospital had coronavirus patients at the time. The manager would not name the hospital, to avoid identifying the patient. She said she agreed to the demand on one condition: that the resident, who was not displaying coronavirus symptoms, be tested. But the hospital refused, saying it did not have enough tests to assess asymptomatic patients.

Eventually, the manager backed down. A week or so later, several residents in the home began displaying symptoms consistent with COVID-19, she said. She didn’t give a precise figure. It is not known whether the transferred patient was the source of the outbreak.

“It was just so reckless,” she said. “They were not thinking at all about us. It was like they were saying, let’s abandon the old people.”

At the Elizabeth Lodge, between March 1 and March 19, four new residents arrived - two from hospitals and another two from other care homes. The Lodge’s management said, in a statement, there was no evidence these residents brought the virus into the home, “but we are continuing to review.”


Knight, the residential services chief executive at Lodge operator CareUK, said it was essential that hospital patients be tested before they were transferred. “We need to ensure not just that the test has been done, but that the results are available prior to making the decision about admission” to the home, he said in a statement to Reuters.

TEST, TEST, TEST

On March 12, Britain’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, announced the ending of most testing of the general population to focus on patients admitted to hospital. But Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, clarified to parliament a week later there would still be testing in isolated clusters of cases in the wider population.

By April 6, the Enfield council had recorded at least 26 deaths in care homes, and 126 suspected cases. Yet only 10 tests per day were being offered for the thousands of care staff across the whole of north London, said Enfield Council leader Caliskan.

Knight said that at Elizabeth Lodge, no tests were available for staff until after April 15, when Health Minister Hancock announced plans to test all residents and care home workers if they had symptoms. Even after Hancock’s pledge, only six tests were made available to Lodge staff and none to residents, Knight added.

Guidance from the Government, which has struggled to rapidly increase the overall availability of tests, remained that staff should simply stay at home and isolate if symptomatic. In his statement to Reuters, Knight said he and others in the industry had appealed to “senior members of the government to explain the challenges we were facing and how best they could support us.” He didn’t say who he spoke to.

Finally, on April 28, Hancock said all care home residents and staff could be tested even if they were not displaying symptoms. Again, the words didn’t match the experience on the ground.

Lisa Coombs, manager of the Minchenden Lodge in Enfield, home to up to 25 residents, said she had only secured a pack of 10 tests. Eight of these had returned a positive result. She’d been unable to secure tests for a further 10 residents even though some were displaying symptoms.

“What the government says is a load of rubbish,” she said. I “I am angry because we are not being supported.” She declined to discuss how many residents have died.

At Elizabeth Lodge, no residents were tested until April 29, said Knight. Even after that date the government’s Care Quality Commission, which has been supplying tests to homes, only provided enough for residents showing symptoms of coronavirus. Things improved “in a very limited way” in the last two weeks of April, said Knight, and now “appear to be gaining momentum.”

Getting access to testing on a meaningful scale now could reduce the impact of the virus in the coming months, he added.

A government spokesman said that a policy of testing everyone prior to admission into care homes was now being instituted, with a recommendation that hospital patients discharged into care homes are isolated for 14 days, even with negative test results.
MASKS

Sonya Kaygan, her mother Ayse recalled, never said much about her work or conditions at the Lodge. But one day, at the start of the outbreak, Sonya saw the long-sleeved gloves that her mother, a caregiver at another home, was using. “We don’t have those at our place,” Kaygan said. The Lodge told Reuters staff had all the equipment that was required.

Unbeknown to her family, Kaygan had ordered surgical facemasks on Amazon. They arrived in early April after she was hospitalized. Other carers at the Lodge ordered masks, too, said another staff member. And after Kaygan’s death, a different fellow employee posted on Twitter: “I work there and all of this has (been) very hard on us all and every one is right. We as carers don’t have enough PPE.”

Another employee at Elizabeth Lodge told Reuters that although staff raised concerns, many had to operate for weeks without face masks or visors. “I was petrified. Every time I went in there, I worried for myself, my family, the people living there, my colleagues,” she said.

She said at the start of March, she remembers two meetings where managers discussed with staff how they would respond if there was a coronavirus outbreak. She said employees questioned why they did not have more protective equipment. The management responded saying they were doing their best to bring more in.

Reuters could not independently verify this account. The Lodge’s management told Reuters that neither Kaygan nor any other employee raised concerns to managers about protective equipment.

It said in a statement that at the time Kaygan worked at the Lodge, face masks were not being used. That, according to the home, was because official guidance then recommended such masks were only necessary when working within a metre (three feet) of someone with COVID-19 symptoms. Public Health England said the home’s interpretation was in line with advice then in force that masks were only needed when in personal contact with someone, such as washing.

Across Enfield, supply of PPE was a major problem. According to council leader Caliskan, by the end of March, supplies in some homes were inadequate, and others were running out. The government repeatedly promised to send supplies, but when a much-anticipated delivery by the army arrived at the council depot on March 28, it took just 6 minutes to unload, she said. It contained only 2,000 aprons and 6,000 masks, which aren’t designed for repeated or prolonged use, for Enfield’s 5,500 care workers.

GETTING TO HOSPITAL

On March 31, just after 2 pm, Sonya Kaygan was picked up by an ambulance from the two-up, two-down home she shared with her mother and daughter. Kaygan was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. As she walked to the ambulance, she turned to her mother and said: “If I never make it back, look after my baby.”

The ambulance crew said Kaygan would be taken to the nearby North Middlesex Hospital, but when the family called there later, there was no one of that name. Uncle Hasan tracked her down to Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, northeast London. Kaygan made video calls to her family, and asked Ayse to come and visit. But, as is the case in many countries, the hospital wouldn’t allow it.

In an email to Reuters, the NHS trust managing Whipps Cross said all visiting was “currently suspended other than in exceptional circumstances” to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Then news came that Kaygan would be intubated - sedated and put on a ventilator. Her last call was to a family member in Cyprus, about 6 am on April 2. “I’m going in now,” she said.

Kaygan’s hospital admission was swift. Many others have reported difficulties getting in.

Munuse Nabi, 90, lived in a care home in Ilford, East London. She was extremely fragile, with heart, lung and kidney problems. But she was also mentally strong with a pin-sharp memory, able to talk on the phone and flick through TV channels. “She was all perfect,” said son Erkan Nabi, a driving instructor.

In early April, Munuse developed a temperature and a dry and persistent cough, and lost her voice. As she got worse, a doctor examined Munuse by video link. When she began to struggle to breathe, Nabi urged the home to send her to hospital.

A nurse, he said, told him: “We’ve been told not to send people to hospital. Just leave them here. They’re comfortable.” He was upset. “They were trying to encourage me to leave her there basically to die.” He insisted they call an ambulance, and she was taken to hospital.

A spokesperson for the care home involved said staff were “doing everything we can to make sure our residents and colleagues stay safe and well throughout these challenging times.”

This approach to hospitalisation reflects what many homes took to be national guidance. An NHS England policy document issued on April 10 listed care home residents among those who “should not ordinarily be conveyed to hospital unless authorised by a senior colleague.”

The document was withdrawn within five days, after public criticism. The NHS did not respond to a request to discuss the document.

London’s ambulance service also issued new guidance.

Ambulance crews assess patients using a standard scoring system of vital signs. According to the Royal College of Physicians, a professional body for doctors, a patient who scores five or more on a 20-point scale should be provided with clinical care and monitored each hour. A patient scoring five would normally be taken to hospital.

But in early March, London’s ambulance service raised the bar for COVID-19 patients to seven.

“I have never seen a score of seven being used before,” said one NHS paramedic interviewed by Reuters. The medic spoke on condition of anonymity.

On April 10, the required score was lowered to five. In a statement, the London Ambulance Service told Reuters its previous guidance was one of several assessments used and clinical judgment was the deciding factor. Asked if the guidance reflected the national approach, the NHS did not respond.

Possible evidence of restrictions on admissions came in a study of 17,000 patients admitted for COVID-19 to 166 NHS hospitals between February 6 and April 1. The study showed that one-third of these patients died, a high fatality rate.

Calum Semple, the lead author and professor of outbreak medicine at Liverpool University, said, in an interview with Reuters, this indicated, among other things, that England set a “high bar” for hospital admission. “Essentially, only those who are pretty sick get in.” But, he said, there was no data yet on whether that high bar ultimately made people in Britain with COVID-19 worse off. The NHS didn’t comment.
FALSE VICTORY

On the hospital wards of London, by Easter Sunday, April 12, there was a sense of light at the end of the tunnel. Over the long holiday weekend, according to several doctors contacted by Reuters, some hospitals saw just a handful of new admissions.

But on the frontline of the efforts to protect the capital’s most vulnerable people, the worst was far from over. According to an official closely involved in London’s response to the coronavirus, the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, was getting reports that food banks were close to running out. Crisis meetings were held all weekend to replenish stocks.

In Enfield, by Easter Sunday a total of 39 care home deaths linked to COVID-19 had been recorded, and 142 residents had suspected infections. By the end of last month, nearly 100 more residents of Enfield care homes would die. The total in the borough, as recorded by the council, would rise to 136 deaths linked to the virus in care homes by April 30, including care home residents who died in hospital.

On the national stage, the government projected a picture of success. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, at his first daily Downing Street briefing since recovering from coronavirus, said on April 30 that Britain was past the peak and had avoided overwhelming the health service.

“It is thanks to that massive collective effort to shield the NHS that we avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic,” said Johnson.

Even so, deaths in care homes were surging.

On the third night of 90-year-old Munuse Nabi’s hospital stay, a doctor called her son Erkan to say her COVID-19 test had come back positive. As her condition was worsening and she was too fragile for invasive treatment, they would not be able to save her life.

Erkan, urged to visit, went to the hospital and was dressed up by staff in what he calls the “full battledress” protective gear, including visor and gown.


As doctors gave Munuse small doses of morphine to make her comfortable, Erkan stayed by her bedside all through April 19 and into the early hours of April 20, holding her hand as she slipped away.

It was in the early hours of April 17 that Kaygan’s family got the call they dreaded. She, too, had passed away.

Her mother posted a message on Facebook: “My soul, my angel, I lost the most beautiful angel in this world. We lost the most beautiful angel in this world.”

She still hasn’t worked up the strength to tell Kaygan’s daughter, three-year-old Ayse, that her mother is dead.


reporting by Stephen Grey and Andrew MacAskill, additional reporting by Ryan McNeill, editing by Janet McBride and Peter Hirschberg
UK government 'using pandemic to transfer NHS duties to private sector'

Critics claim Matt Hancock has accelerated dismantling of state healthcare


Juliette Garside and Rupert Neate Mon 4 May 2020 THE GUARDIAN
 

Matt Hancock at the opening of the NHS Nightingale hospital in London. The consultancy firm KPMG coordinated its setting up. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The government is using the coronavirus pandemic to transfer key public health duties from the NHS and other state bodies to the private sector without proper scrutiny, critics have warned.

Doctors, campaign groups, academics and MPs raised the concerns about a “power grab” after it emerged on Monday that Serco was in pole position to win a deal to supply 15,000 call-handlers for the government’s tracking and tracing operation.

They said the health secretary, Matt Hancock, had “accelerated” the dismantling of state healthcare and that the duty to keep the public safe was being “outsourced” to the private sector.

In recent weeks, ministers have used special powers to bypass normal tendering and award a string of contracts to private companies and management consultants without open competition.

Deloitte, KPMG, Serco, Sodexo, Mitie, Boots and the US data mining group Palantir have secured taxpayer-funded commissions to manage Covid-19 drive-in testing centres, the purchasing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the building of Nightingale hospitals.

Now, the Guardian has seen a letter from the Department of Health to NHS trusts instructing them to stop buying any of their own PPE and ventilators.

From Monday, procurement of a list of 16 items must be handled centrally. Many of the items on the list, such as PPE, are in high demand during the pandemic, while others including CT scanners, mobile X-ray machines and ultrasounds are high-value machines that are used more widely in hospitals.

Centralising purchasing is likely to hand more responsibility to Deloitte. As well as co-ordinating Covid-19 test centres and logistics at three new “lighthouse” laboratories created to process samples, the accounting and management consultancy giant secured a contract several weeks ago to advise central government on PPE purchases.

The firm said it was providing operational support for the procurement process of PPE from existing and new manufacturers, but declined to comment further.

“The government must not allow the current crisis to be used as cover to extend the creeping privatisation of the NHS,” said Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

“The process for the management and purchase of medical supplies must be open, transparent and subject to full scrutiny. Deloitte’s track record of delivering PPE to the frontline since this virus began is not one of success and taking more decision-making authority from NHS managers and local authorities shifts power further from the frontline.”

Tony O’Sullivan, a retired paediatrician who co-chairs the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public, said this was a “dangerous time” for the NHS, and that the “error-ridden response” from government had exposed a decade of underfunding.

“Now, rather than learning from those errors they are compounding them by centralising decision-making but outsourcing huge responsibility for the safety of the population to private companies,” said O’Sullivan.

Allyson Pollock, the director of the Newcastle University Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science, said tasks including testing, contact tracing and purchasing should be handled through regional authorities rather than central government.

“We are beginning to see the construction of parallel structures, having eviscerated the old ones,” she said. “I don’t think this is anything new, it just seems to be accelerated under Matt Hancock. These structures are completely divorced from local residents, local health services and local communities.”

Friday’s letter, signed by two officials from the Department of Health and Social Care, says that from Monday key equipment will be purchased through a procurement team comprising hundreds of staff from the government’s commercial function and other departments.

Global demand for equipment has been “unprecedented”, according to the letter, and it is therefore “vital that the UK government procures items nationally, rather than individual NHS organisations compete with each other for the same supplies”.

Trusts are told to flag any purchases already in progress so that these can be taken over by the central team and put into a central pot. “The national team can help you to conclude the deal, reimburse you, and manage the products through the national stocks.”

In a separate email, sent from NHS England on Saturday, trusts have been instructed to carry out a daily stock check from the beginning of this week. They must report down to the nearest 100 their stores of 13 types of protective equipment, including gloves, aprons, masks, gowns and eye protection. The information is being gathered by Palantir, a data processing company co-founded by the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.

The information will be used to distribute equipment to those trusts most in need, and in some cases move stock from one hospital to another.

A purchasing manager, speaking anonymously, said hospitals were concerned they might be forced to hand over stock and then run out before it could be replaced. “The lead time on some of these orders is 90 days,” said the manager. “Centrally, there is nobody who is able to deliver things more quickly. What this is going to do is force people to hide what they’ve got.”

“This coronavirus pandemic is being used to privatise yet more of our NHS against the wishes of the public, and without transparency and accountability,” said Cat Hobbs, director of campaign group We Own It. “This work should be done within the NHS. It shouldn’t be outsourced.”

“This is not the time for a power grab,” said the Labour MP Rosie Cooper, who sits on the health and social care committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the management of the outbreak. “Whatever contracts are awarded they have got to have a sunset clause. Three months, six months, it has got to be shown to be cost effective for it to continue after a certain date,” she said.

The Department of Health was contacted for comment.

Outsourcing

Testing centres

Contracts to operate drive-through coronavirus testing centres were awarded under special pandemic rules through a fast-track process without open competition. The contracts, the value of which has not been disclosed, were granted to accountants Deloitte, which is managing logistics at a national level. Deloitte then appointed outsourcing specialists Serco, Mitie, G4S and Sodexo, and the pharmacy chain Boots, to manage the centres.

Lab tests

A coalition of private companies and public bodies have come together to form Lighthouse Labs, to test samples in three centres in Milton Keynes, Cheshire and Glasgow. Deloitte is handling payroll, rotas and other logistics, working alongside pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, as well as the army and private companies Amazon and Boots.

Nightingale hospitals

Dozens of private companies have won contracts to build, run and support the Nightingale hospitals. Consultancy firm KPMG coordinated the setting up of the first Nightingale at the ExCel centre in east London alongside military planners. Infrastructure consultants including Mott MacDonald and Archus also had roles in the project.

Outsourcing firm Interserve worked on the construction of the Birmingham Nightingale hospital at the NEC, and was awarded a contract to hire about 1,500 staff to run the Manchester Nightingale. G4S secured the contract to supply security guards for all the Nightingale hospitals.

Recruiting extra NHS and hospital staff

Capita, another outsourcing firm, was awarded a contract to help the NHS “vet and onboard thousands of returning nurses and doctors”.

PPE


The government appointed Deloitte to help it ramp up British production of protective equipment and source stocks from the UK and abroad. Some figures in the UK manufacturing industry have described the project as a “disaster” and accused Deloitte of pursuing factories in China – where prices have leapt and supply is tight due to huge global demand – rather than focusing on retooling UK factories to make more kit.

Clipper Logistics, a Yorkshire-based logistics and supply chain firm founded by the Conservative donor Steve Parkin, was awarded government contract to supply and deliver protective equipment to NHS trusts, care homes other healthcare workers.

I’m reading C0423-Letter to Procurement Leads - Centralising Procurement of PPE Other Supplies_ 1 May-2 on @Scribd #ReadMore https://www.scribd.com/document/459848689/C0423-Letter-to-Procurement-Leads-Centralising-Procurement-of-PPE-Other-Supplies-1-May-2
Anger at UK lockdown easing plans 'that could put workers at risk'

Unions criticise guidance and say staff may refuse to turn up unless safety is guaranteed
Rowena Mason and Heather Stewart Tue 5 May 2020 THE GUARDIAN
 

Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the TSSA, warned that the government’s demands for hugely increasing public transport from next week were unrealistic. Photograph: Newscast/REX/Shutterstock

Workers may refuse to turn up or stage walk-outs unless the government helps guarantee their safety, trade unions have warned amid anger over guidance designed to ease the lockdown.

As ministers prepare to urge the country back to return to work, Labour joined a string of trade unions in criticising draft guidelines for being vague, inadequate and putting staff at risk because employers can choose how closely to follow them.

They warned that vulnerable people such as pregnant women, those with underlying conditions such as cancer, asthma and diabetes, and over-70s could be forced to work without enough protections.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, backed workers’ concerns on Monday night, saying: “People rightly need confidence that it’s safe before they go back out to work, travel or use public services.” He called for a “national safety standard” for businesses, schools and public services, with clear guidelines on social distancing.

Boris Johnson is intending to set out on Sunday how restrictions can be eased, amid concerns about the economic cost of the lockdown – and pressure from restive Conservative MPs.

A string of Tories raised concerns about the continuing restrictions in the Commons on Monday, with Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee, calling for the removal of “arbitrary rules and limitations on freedom as quickly as possible” and suggesting the public had been “a little too willing to stay at home”.

Business groups and trade unions were given 12 hours to respond to draft guidelines over the weekend for how to protect people at work if the two-metre rule cannot be followed, with suggestions including physical shields, time limits on face-to-face meetings and staggered shift times.

According to sources, other workplace measures include reduced hot-desking and avoiding the sharing of equipment including pens. A section marked PPE contains only a promise of more detail. One section says employers could consider limiting how many people are in a vehicle, without saying how many the government considers would be safe.

Unions, led by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), criticised the non-binding guidelines for letting employers decide what is safe when it comes to distance between workers, cleaning practices and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).

The TUC, which represents 5.5m workers through its member unions, warned that under the current guidance “bad bosses will be able to expose workers to infection without fear of consequences”.

The section referring to workers with underlying health conditions says they should be “asked to take extra care in observing social distancing” and “helped to work from home where possible” – or alternatively “offered the safest possible roles”, the Guardian understands.

Boris Johnson is due to detail how restrictions will be eased on Sunday. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/10 Downing Street/Crown Copyright/PA

But unions fear that creates a loophole that could allow exploitative bosses to pressure vulnerable staff to return to the workplace.

The TUC is also calling for employers to be obliged to publish the risk assessments they will have to carry out before staff can return, to allow workers to scrutinise them.

The GMB, which has more than 600,000 members, said the guidance “does not adequately protect workers from Covid-19 exposure and as a result many may refuse to work to avoid putting themselves and their families at risk”.

It highlighted section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, which gives workers the “right to cease work in circumstances of serious and imminent danger to themselves or others” and said it was “clear that failure to adequately control or mitigate Covid exposure risk would be considered serious and imminent danger by the worker”.

John Phillips, the GMB’s acting general secretary, said: “For weeks the government has warned people this virus is dangerous and they must maintain social distancing and abide by the lockdown. They cannot just flick a switch, say it’s safe to work within two metres of other people without PPE and expect them to head merrily off to work.”

Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), warned that the government’s demands for hugely increasing public transport from next week were unrealistic.

“It’s not just for the staff but passengers – how safe will people feel on overflowing train or tube carriages at the moment?” he said. “Health and safety laws allow people to walk off jobs if they are at risk. That is the law of our country. And clearly our members are knowledgeable about the law.

“But I hope we will not reach that stage because I do believe employers actually do care about the health and safety of members and the travelling public.”

With the government keen to open schools from next month, teaching unions say they are awaiting detailed discussions about how that could take place safely.Q&A
What are the UK government's 'five tests' for ending lockdown restrictions?Show

Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said “there needs to be an in-depth conversation about how we can keep education staff safe and, we think, parents and carers of children, safe in this context”.

Senior union sources said they believed the government would have to improve its workplace guidance in negotiations, especially to protect the vulnerable, but if not, then many trade unions would have to advise their members not to go into work if they feel at risk.

Our priority is protecting the public. We supported the lockdown and support restrictions staying in place at this time
Keir Starmer

However, they also stressed that the government appeared to want to avoid industrial tensions at a time of national crisis. Ministers are also concerned about ensuring workers feel safe enough to venture out of lockdown.

In a hint that the government might be willing to make concessions to assuage public fears, Amanda Solloway, the business minister, told MPs on Monday that her department was negotiating with employers and unions to “come to a shared view” about workplace safety.

She was speaking after Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, wrote to the business secretary, Alok Sharma, saying unions would have “no hesitation” in telling members that the guidelines cannot protect workers unless they were significantly strengthened.

The letter, seen by the Guardian, says: “Working people need to see that the government is genuinely committed to protecting their health and safety. At present, this guidance fails to provide clear direction to those employers who want to act responsibly and is an open goal to the worst of employers who want to return to business at usual – which will put their workforce at risk.

“We want to be able to recommend the government’s approach to safe working to our members and the wider workforce. As it stands, we cannot.”

Labour threw its weight behind the TUC’s concerns. Starmer said the government must address trade union concerns about coronavirus safety at work, as he unveiled a seven-point plan for a “national consensus” on tackling the virus.

Speaking ahead of talks with the prime minister later this week, he said: “Our priority is protecting the public’s health and saving lives. That is why we supported the lockdown and again support the restrictions staying in place at this time.”

Starmer also said the government should beef up the health and safety executive, which will have the job of enforcing new safety rules, but has been hit by deep budget cuts in recent years.

A business department spokesperson said: “We have been working with businesses, union leaders and the science and medical community on developing sensible guidance for businesses that will give UK workers the utmost confidence they can return to work safely.

“As part of this process we have worked closely with the TUC and look forward to continuing that close engagement, and will of course consider any recommendations they make carefully.”


Workplace coronavirus safety rules must be binding, says Labour

Keir Starmer criticises government’s draft guidance as ‘pretty vague’ and calls for enforcement of common set of standards


Rowena Mason Deputy political editor Tue 5 May 2020 THE GUARDIAN
 
Keir Starmer said people were ‘really worried about going to work’. 
Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has called for sanctions on employers who flout rules on keeping workers safe from coronavirus, as Matt Hancock, the health secretary, refused to confirm how new guidance on social distancing at work would be enforced.

Starmer said people were “really worried about going to work” and called for a consensus between the government, opposition parties, employers and trade unions on how to make workplaces safe with national standards on social distancing and handwashing.

In a round of broadcast interviews, he branded the government’s draft guidance on social distancing at work “pretty vague” and called for real enforcement of a common set of standards to help reassure people that lifting the lockdown would be safe.

Unions are deeply concerned about the guidance, warning that it could let rogue employers get away with endangering their staff if the government advice is voluntary and not enforceable.

Pressed on the issue, Hancock avoided saying whether there would be binding standards for employers on keeping workers safe. He told Sky News that such issues were “under discussion” between trade unions and the business department but stopped short of setting out how those employers who disobey the rules would be punished.

The government has been worried that people may be too concerned about coronavirus to want to leave the lockdown, while trade unions warned on Monday that many could refuse to go back to work or stage walk-outs if they felt unsafe.

Starmer argued that national standards would give “a degree of confidence”, telling ITV’s GMB: “The point that trade unions have raised is safety at work and there was a consultation document the government put out last weekend which was pretty vague, and it needs strengthening.
Q&A

What are the UK government's 'five tests' for ending lockdown restrictions?

“That’s why one of the principles I’ve set out today is a national safety standard. I think people will want to know: if I’m going back to work, is it a safe environment, what’s being done about social distancing, what are the hand-washing facilities, if I need protective equipment am I going to get it? It’s that degree of reassurance.”

Starmer also raised concerns about the emphasis that Hancock is placing on getting people to download an app to help trace the contacts of those confirmed as infected with coronavirus. The mission to test, track and trace those with coronavirus is part of the plan for new outbreaks of coronavirus to be suppressed, as the UK exits the lockdown.

“I am a bit concerned that a similar app in Singapore only had a 20% take up rate,” Starmer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “You’re going to have to have more manual tracing as well.”

The government launched a pilot scheme on Monday to trial the app in the Isle of Wight, where people are being urged to download it.Q&A
What is contact tracing?Show

Hancock said the app was “a very, very positive step in terms of us all being able to get some of our liberty back”.

He added: “By having the test, track and test in place we can release more of the social distancing measures and, as I said, the more people who download it ... the more effective it will be and the more we can control the spread of the virus, and that’s why it’s so important to do this.”

The app has been criticised by some campaigners for jeopardising people’s privacy. Amnesty International has raised concerns that “the government may be planning to route private data through a central database, opening the door to pervasive state surveillance and privacy infringement, with potentially discriminatory effects”.

However, Hancock dismissed that charge as “completely wrong.” Asked why, he said: “Firstly because the data is stored on your phone until you need to get in contact with the NHS in order to get a test and secondly because the purposes of this are purely and simply to control the spread of the virus, which is really important.

“Thirdly because we’ve all had to give up significant infringements on our liberty, for instance with the social distancing measures and the lockdown, and we want to release those, and this approach will help us to release them ... I can reassure you that it’s completely untrue.”

The health secretary was also questioned about whether new rules for social distancing and staying at home would be different for the over-70s and people with underlying health conditions.

Many Tory MPs are urging the government not to treat people differently based on age, with Sir Graham Brady, leader of the backbench 1922 Committee, urging government to let older people take their own decisions about the risks


Hancock would not give any assurances that older people would be treated in the same way as younger people when the lockdown is eased, although he said that had been the approach so far.

“The [over-70s] are not part of the shielded group, which is about individual conditions. But unfortunately it is a scientific fact that older people are more susceptible to having very serious consequences of this disease and a much higher proportion of people sadly who’ve died are in the older groups,” he said.
Reuters Pulitzer team captured Hong Kong's descent into chaos

The young woman is pressed to the ground next to a riot police shield. Detained by Hong Kong authorities, she screams her name out to friends so they can call a lawyer to help.

An anti-extradition bill protester is detained by riot police during skirmishes between the police and protesters outside Mong Kok police station, in Hong Kong, China, September 2, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File photo
The picture, taken on Sept. 2 last year in the midst of huge and violent protests that rocked Hong Kong for more than six months, was part of a series of images by a team of Reuters photographers that won a Pulitzer Prize this week for breaking news photography.

The photographs range from sweeping bird’s eye views of boulevards packed with tens of thousands of demonstrators to close-ups of pitched battles between anti-China protesters and police seeking to restore order.

Most of the violence took place at night, lending an eerie aura to the action - protesters stood out as silhouettes against teargas smoke; giant neon letters reading “FREE HK” and carried aloft by protesters glowed in the gloom from a hilltop.

For Tyrone Siu, a Reuters photographer who is from Hong Kong, covering the story was intensely personal.

A graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, scene of some of the fiercest clashes between police and protesters, he saw his alma mater turned into a battleground. The city sports stadium became a giant shelter for injured protesters.

“At the same time, I must remain calm amid the intense atmosphere in order to carry out my duty as a photojournalist, helping foreign colleagues to get about and handling the fast-changing situation,” he recalled.


Siu took the picture of the shouting woman and, despite spending months on the streets of a city that resembled a war zone at times, it sticks in his memory.

“The emotions shown on her face were so strong and striking that it left a lasting memory,” he said.

“But it was only one day of many days, one face of many young faces being detained by the police in this manner throughout the months-long protest.”

‘CHASING AROUND’

The Pulitzer Prize for Reuters, a unit of Thomson Reuters, was the newsroom’s eighth since 2008, and fifth in the last three years. Reuters coverage of the Hong Kong uprising was also a Pulitzer finalist in the international reporting category.

Many of the winning photographs depicted violent clashes between Hong Kong protesters and authorities, including images taken in the midst of skirmishes with tear gas, rubber bullets and hurled bricks.

Ahmad Masood, Asia Editor for Reuters Pictures who oversaw the coverage, said he and others began to prioritise the Hong Kong story in June, when big rallies were announced.


As mass protests turned violent and time passed, the protest movement began to fracture, making it harder to plan.

“This is where Tyrone’s local knowledge and network of contacts kept the team informed of what the next development was likely to be,” said Masood.

“There was a lot of chasing around. Sometimes there were four photographers at different spots across the city with some serious clashes going on during daylight and night.”

In some pictures, civilians are caught up in the chaos - passengers outside an airport running with their luggage or a man crouching as he leaves an optician store, the flames of a molotov cocktail licking the street in front of him.

In others, police clash with demonstrators, many of them students wearing gas masks and helmets.

There are moments of brutality. A photograph taken by Thomas Peter shows a masked anti-government protester attacking a man suspected of being a pro-Beijing activist with a hammer. Blood pours from the victim’s head.

Jorge Silva photographed a woman with fury etched on her face as she held a Chinese flag in support of Beijing and shouted into her smartphone, while anti-China protesters crowded around her.

Rickey Rogers, Global Editor for Reuters Pictures, said the prize was a testament to the teamwork that went into covering a protracted and often dangerous story.

“Eleven photographers have their names inscribed in journalistic history, but there were 28 Reuters photographers who rotated through Hong Kong during 2019, plus security and legal advisers, and a team of editors.

“All of them were critical in what truly matters beyond any prize – telling the news story to the world.”

Reporting and writing by Mike Collett-White
Virgin Atlantic to axe a third of jobs and shut Gatwick operations

Airline fights for survival as coronavirus pandemic puts industry in jeopardy
Jasper Jolly Tue 5 May 2020 THE GUARDIAN
 

Grounded planes at Bournemouth airport. Virgin said it could take three years for flight numbers to recover. Photograph: Naomi Baker/Getty

Virgin Atlantic plans to cut more than 3,000 jobs and shut its operations at Gatwick airport in the latest sign of the chaos caused in the airline industry by the coronavirus.

The 3,150 planned redundancies represent almost one in three of Virgin Atlantic’s workforce of 10,000, prompting calls from unions and Labour for the government to step in to save the jobs.

Airlines across the world have been rocked by the grounding of flights as a result of the pandemic lockdowns, which have put their business models in jeopardy.

Virgin Atlantic’s job cuts are the latest blow to the UK and Irish aviation industries, with tens of thousands of redundancies planned. International Airlines Group plans to cut 12,000 jobs at British Airways and 900 at Aer Lingus. Irish budget carrier Ryanair has also announced 3,000 job losses, while aerospace manufacturer Rolls-Royce is considering as many as 8,000 redundancies.

Virgin said it could take three years for flight numbers to return to 2019 levels, and that it had to cut jobs to survive.

At the time of the lockdown, according to flight schedules data research by Cirium, the airline was operating 422 flights per week and carrying more than 100,000 passengers. In February Virgin accounted for 19% of the capacity crossing the Atlantic, with 258 weekly flights – second only to British Airways

Sir Richard Branson, the airline’s founder, has asked for a bailout but the UK government is unwilling to provide a separate package for airlines beyond the help offered to all businesses.

However, the Labour party called on the government to step in to protect the jobs of Virgin Atlantic employees.

“The government is failing workers by not stepping in and protecting these jobs,” said Jim McMahon, the shadow transport secretary. “Labour has consistently argued for a sector-specific deal for aviation, and the government must do more to ensure airlines and airports can operate safely when the time is right to transition out of the lockdown.”

Virgin Atlantic’s efforts to secure a bailout were thought to be hindered by the fact that US airline Delta Air Lines, which owns 49% of the company, had not injected more money.

Activists have expressed concerns that government funds should not be used to bail out Virgin because majority owner Branson is a billionaire who is not resident in the UK for tax purposes.

Branson last month pledged to mortgage his Caribbean island to help raise money for his stricken Virgin Group, promising to inject $250m into the company mostly to help the airline.

Campaigners have also raised concerns that a bailout of polluting airlines would impede progress on fighting the climate crisis.

European airlines have so far received pledges of more than €26bn of government support.

Union representatives said the Virgin job cuts represented “another devastating blow” for UK aviation, adding that cuts were premature while the government was still paying 80% of furloughed workers’ wages.

The announcement also added to concerns about the future of jobs at Gatwick airport. British Airways has cut back Gatwick operations and warned it could pull out altogether, while Norwegian Air Shuttle, the airport’s third-largest carrier, narrowly avoided bankruptcy after investors and creditors agreed a plan that will allow it to access state aid.

Diana Holland, the assistant general secretary of the Unite union, said she had “grave concerns about the impact on Gatwick airport”.

A Gatwick spokesman said the airport remained “very optimistic about the long-term prospects of Gatwick airport and our resilience as a business.”. He added that Virgin Atlantic would retain its flight slots at the airport so could return when demand recovers. The airline flies mostly to holiday destinations, including St Lucia, Barnados and Orlando, from Gatwick.

Alongside the job cuts, subject to consultation, Virgin will significantly restructure its operations. It will immediately retire its seven 747 jumbo jets, and move Gatwick flights to London Heathrow, while retaining its base in Manchester.

Shai Weiss, Virgin Atlantic’s chief executive, said: “To safeguard our future and emerge a sustainably profitable business, now is the time for further action to reduce our costs, preserve cash and to protect as many jobs as possible. It is crucial that we return to profitability in 2021.

“After 9/11 and the global financial crisis we took similar painful measures, but fortunately many members of our team were back flying with us within a couple of years.

“Depending on how long the pandemic lasts and the period of time our planes are grounded for, hopefully the same will happen this time.”

The Department for Transport has been approached for comment.


Virgin Atlantic job cuts were the only route to Treasury coffers

Billionaire Branson will have a tough time getting a hearing for the fantastical £500m of state aid he requires. What did he expect?
Sir Richard Branson crashes into a padded barrier while participating
 in a human bowling ball event in Atlanta. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

Nils Pratley Published Tue 5 May 2020 THE GUARDIAN

Here’s the bit Sir Richard Branson didn’t mention in his open letter to Virgin employees a fortnight ago: the only possible route to the Treasury’s wallet involves almost a third of the 10,000 staff at the Virgin Atlantic losing their jobs.

The jobs decision hadn’t been taken at the time but Branson could still have foreshadowed an obvious threat. Government ministers were never going to throw £500m of taxpayers’ money, or some such sum, in Virgin Atlantic’s direction unless they could see a vaguely credible plan to cut costs. The airline, remember, was loss-making even before the pandemic.

As far it goes, the new boardroom thinking looks pragmatic. Unprofitable routes will be dropped, gas-guzzling and ancient 747s will be ditched and Gatwick will be abandoned as a base for the time being. It’s tough on staff but the entire airline industry is acting similarly.

The action plan, though, is very far from being a sufficient qualification for a bailout. The Treasury will not want to see Virgin Atlantic go bust, taking even more jobs with it, but, as Branson must know, the politics of a loan are appalling.

He’s a billionaire who lives in a tax haven and who has a liquid asset in the form of a $1.5bn stake in publicly traded Virgin Galactic; and the owner of the remaining 49% of Virgin Atlantic is Delta Air Lines, which can’t contribute because the US government doesn’t want a dime of its own bailout support to leak into foreign airlines.

To even get a hearing in the Treasury, Branson will now have to recapitalise Virgin Atlantic. That could mean injecting cash himself or finding new investors – and the capital will have to be genuinely at risk. Then he will have to pledge to forgo the £20m a year that Virgin Group is currently paid in brand fees, and persuade Delta to do similarly with its IT charge. He will then have to commit to financial transparency and, probably, offer an equity slice to the state.

Its impossible to know if he’s both willing and able to meet those demands, but they seem the minimum requirement for Treasury even to contemplate a loan or guarantee – and probably for a sum much smaller than the fantastical £500m. The process is harder than writing self-serving letters, but what did Branson expect?
Ocado investors are right to make a fuss over executive bonuses

Ocado these days is worth £12bn, equivalent to the combined stock market values of Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Marks & Spencer, which represents an astonishing shift in power in the food retailing industry.

The big money in the food retail business, it turns out, lies not in selling groceries to shoppers, but in selling robots and clever delivery technology to grocers. Ocado’s seven licensing deals with overseas retailers have transformed its prospects, and the pandemic has accelerated a process that was happening anyway.

And, since the Ocado co-founder and chief executive, Tim Steiner, still owns 29m shares, his 4.2% stake is worth roughly £500m. Which raises the obvious question: why on the earth, back in 2014, did he require a side order of 4m freebie shares to encourage him to turn up for work?

Those shares were the largest part of a “growth incentive plan” (GIP) that seems to have been created for no other reason than the management fancied a potentially juicer jackpot than could be generated by the regular long-term plan (which, naturally, they kept as well).

The sole performance condition was to get the share price to improve faster than the FTSE 100 index over a five-year period, which was achieved in spades. Last May Steiner’s 4m GIP shares were worth £54m and the company bought him out for cash. Three other directors shared almost £34m.

Wednesday’s vote on Ocado’s remuneration report, which describes the final tallies, therefore comes long after the ship has sailed. Rebellion, one might say, is pointless, especially as 2014’s shareholders approved the GIP at launch with the usual Putin-like majority of 83%.

But, actually, it’s still important that today’s Ocado investors make a fuss. Steiner’s £54m payday is not as ludicrous as the £75m that the housebuilder Persimmon showered on Jeff Fairburn, but the common element is the lack of a cap on the size of the reward.

Such structures, fund managers keep telling us, are no longer acceptable. If they mean it, they should give a thumbs-down to Ocado’s pay report. Steiner has created a brilliant business, but his GIP should never been proposed or approved.
Wisconsin GOP judge: COVID-19 is spreading due to meat-packing workers and not ‘regular folk

May 5, 2020 By Brad Reed


The Republican Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday said that COVID-19 is only spreading through people in meat-packing plants and not “the regular folks” who work elsewhere.

During a hearing about Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’s stay-at-home orders, Chief Justice Patience D. Roggensack downplayed concerns about the virus sweeping across the state by claiming it was limited to certain areas.

“Due to the meat-packing, though, that’s where Brown County got the [COVID-19] flare,” she said. “It wasn’t just the regular folks in Brown County.”

According to Vox correspondent Ian Millhiser, Roggensack made her remarks about “regular folks” in response to an attorney who defended the stay-at-home order for Brown County because the disease was spreading from urban areas into rural area

The working class aren’t “regular folks,” according to Wisconsin’s Republican chief justice, who is content to let them die. pic.twitter.com/JvnwdXJsPF
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 5, 2020




‘It’s ridiculous’: CNN reporter stunned after listening to Trump ranting about ‘haters’


During an exchange with reporters this Tuesday, President Trump was asked why he won’t allow Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify before the House. According to Trump, it’s because the House “is a set-up” that’s full of a “bunch of Trump haters.”

REPORTER: Why won't you let Fauci testify before the House?

TRUMP: "Because the House is a set up. The House is a bunch of Trump haters … they, frankly, want our situation to be unsuccessful, which means death." pic.twitter.com/G3G5OoV5IV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 5, 2020


Trump went on to accuse the Democrats of wanting him to fail at battling the coronavirus, “which means death.”

CNN’s Dana Bash and Jim Sciutto discussed the spectacle, with Bash saying that Trump’s refusal to allow Fauci and other administration officials to testify before the House is “ridiculous and it flies in the face of the Constitution, what is required of Congress.”

“The idea that even now the president just doesn’t care about basic checks and balances in the Constitution is remarkable,” Bash said. “Elections have consequences — Democrats took control of the House, period.”