THE BMA yesterday condemned the 150,000 Covid deaths, so far, since the start of the pandemic. The reason for the mountain of corpses is that the Tory government refused to lock down to beat the virus, and is putting big business and their profits first, over workers lives!
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA council chair, said yesterday: ‘Today marks a sombre and deeply tragic milestone in our fight against this devastating virus. Each of the 150,000 who have died have left loved ones and friends behind, and our thoughts and sympathies go out to them for their loss.
‘This figure is a stark reminder that Covid-19 remains serious and deadly, and means that in less than a year the UK has seen another 50,000 deaths from the virus – it was only on January 26, 2021 that we mourned the loss of 100,000 people.
‘We must not play down the impact of Omicron as a mild illness, especially with increasing numbers of patients being hospitalised. Today, there are almost 18,500 people in hospital with Covid – a figure which has more than doubled since Christmas.
‘Two-dozen hospital trusts have now declared critical incidents, and ambulance services are failing to meet deadlines to reach patients with life-threatening illnesses. This is on top of pressures from the record-breaking waiting list of almost six million patients.’
Earlier last week, the BMA revealed that: ‘Around two-thirds of UK doctors have told the BMA that the spread of Omicron is causing a dramatic slowdown in the provision of non-urgent medical care, leaving millions of patients in untold suffering as a result.
More than one-in-five doctors have had to personally self-isolate within the last two weeks.
More than nine-in-ten doctors are worried about the NHS’s ability to provide urgent and acute care to non-Covid patients, as well as tackling the backlog of nearly six million patients waiting for treatment.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: ‘The Prime Minister is wrong to ask that the NHS ‘‘just get through it’’. This survey shows that Omicron is battering our health service, forcing staff off sick, resulting in untold suffering for patients as a result.’
He added: ‘We currently have a record-breaking waiting list stretching to almost six million. These are real people in distress, 312,000 of whom have been already waiting more than 12 months.
‘With GPs struggling with staff absences and some two-dozen hospital trusts now declaring critical incidents, the army being deployed to support hospitals, and some ambulance trusts asking patients to make their own way to hospital, the government must now act decisively to control the spread and impact of Omicron on our health service.’
The reality is that the Tories and the current Labour leadership are putting the interests of the banks and big business before the interests of the UK’s working class and middle class.
For the Tories, securing the bosses profits is much more important than beating Covid.
The Tory and Labour war against Covid is a phony war, in which Covid is not only developing, but is now being used to prove that the NHS is not fit for purpose, and that the great achievement of the UK workers and the Attlee government in post war 1945, the NHS, should be wound up, and replaced by a privatised system.
Currently in China, Yuzhou, a city of over 12 million people has been locked down after 5 Covid cases. The Covid enemy has been chased out of China and has been allowed to adopt the UK as its new home!
This is why the trade unions and the TUC must now move into action to save the NHS from being destroyed.
The TUC must call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries and put the working class and the middle class first.
A nationalised and planned socialist economy in the UK will finish off Covid in record time, and create the conditions for a massive development of the NHS, as well as putting an end to the bankers and the bosses, who at the moment are preparing their parties to celebrate the end of the NHS and a return to private medicine!
