We sent the following message today, 20 September 2020, to Independent SAGE:
| “Doctors in Unite fully endorse Independent SAGE’s emergency ten point plan to avoid a national lockdown. [The plan can be found here: https://www.independentsage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Emergency-Plan-PUBLISHED.pdf ] Experience from other countries such as Germany, South Korea and Japan has shown that if the correct measures are adopted the case rate of COVID 19 can be substantially reduced and unnecessary deaths prevented. Equally these proposals are not alien to the United Kingdom as virtually all of the recommendations are already policy in our devolved administrations. However, despite governing one of the richest countries in the world, Boris Johnson and the Tory Party callously ignore what can be done and what needs to be done and instead throw billions of pounds at private sector providers such as Serco, Sitel and Deloitte whose national “test, trace, isolate and support” programme is demonstrably unfit for purpose, and is contributing to the current alarming rise in Covid-19 infection. Doctors in Unite call on the Tory Government to take off their ideological blinkers and to listen to the experts and people on the front line, to give the NHS and Public Health the tools they need to crush the virus and to immediately adopt i-SAGE’s emergency ten point plan” We did suggest an amendment to point 2 of the plan which says there should be “no return to workplaces until they are certified Covid-safe”. It is very difficult to make any indoor space completely Covid-safe and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has suffered swingeing cuts over the last decade to the point where it is unable to fulfil its statutory duties in the workplace. We suggest therefore that there should be no return to the workplace “until it has been fully risk-assessed”, which will allow for trade union and worker involvement in ensuring that workplaces are as safe a possible. |
Doctors in Unite 