THE JOHNSON government is now paying the price for refusing to follow the example of China by organising a national lockdown, with no loss of wages or jobs by workers, until the Covid-19 plague is defeated.
The Tories always put the profits of the bosses first. Now, with the Covid rampaging out of control, they are bringing in Plan B, – with C and D to come no doubt.
They have had to restore measures they had dumped, believing their own propaganda that they had pushed back the virus, but the Omicron strain is now rampant.
It is now running at 200,000 cases daily and swamping the NHS – and the first death has been recorded.
In a letter to hospitals, NHS England chiefs have had to say that NHS patients must be discharged into care homes, hospices, hotels or their own homes before Christmas to free up hospital beds to try to keep the NHS open.
With Johnson in a panic, more than half a million people booked their Covid booster jabs on Monday – sending the NHS website crashing.
Meanwhile, fully-vaccinated people in England who come into contact with any Covid case must now take daily lateral flow tests for seven days.
No 10 said hundreds more sites, mobile units and pop-ups would be set up across the country, including at football stadiums, shopping centres and racecourses, in the next week in a desperate bid to slow the spread of the Omicron variant, and prevent a healthcare disaster.
The prime minister and NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard are now appealing for ‘tens of thousands’ of volunteers to join the belated ‘national mission’ and help achieve an accelerated booster rollout.
At the moment, there are nearly 3,000 vaccine sites across the country run by more than 90,000 volunteers.
Omicron has risen to more than 44% of cases in London and is expected to become the dominant variant in the city in the next 48 hours. The UK confirmed 54,661 new coronavirus cases on Monday, as well as 38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said schools across the country are seeing ‘very severe low attendance’ from both pupils and staff as the Omicron variant spreads
For millions of people Christmas will now have to be abandoned, with worse to come – all just part of the price for Johnson’s decision to avoid a national lockdown and to put the profits of big business before people’s healthcare.
Yesterday, 70 Tory MPs were due to vote against Johnson measures – from the right – against face coverings being made compulsory in most indoor settings, against fully-vaccinated people who have been exposed to a positive Covid case taking daily lateral flow tests and who receive a negative result, and against the introduction of a Covid pass to enter a large venue.
Johnson is relying on Labour votes to get his Plan B through Parliament.
On Monday, Health Secretary Sajid Javid told MPs the Omicron variant now represented 20% of cases in England and that the UK Health Security Agency estimated the current number of daily infections was around 200,000. He warned that hospitalisations and deaths would ‘dramatically increase’ in the next few days and weeks. Johnson remains putting the profits of the bosses first!
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said it is his party’s ‘patriotic duty’ to ensure the new rules go through, and has refused to force Johnson to call a general election. By approving the government’s plans, he said his party was ‘supporting the NHS and supporting our country’.
In fact, if Johnson survives the North Shropshire by-election on Thursday, Starmer is waiting for an offer to make him Johnson’s deputy in a National Government to see Johnson’s measures to save the profits of British capitalism at the expense of working class healthcare carried through.
Trade unions must oppose any such national government.
The only way that the NHS can be saved and the Covid virus defeated is through the trade unions taking general strike action to bring the Johnson government down and bring in a Workers’ Government. This will put the interests of the working class and middle class first by nationalising the banks and the major industries and by bringing in a socialist planned economy.
Eradicating the Covid virus will then be the number one priority, both in the UK and worldwide, while the UK’s nationalised and planned economy will be able to satisfy all the requirement of the working class and the middle class in the UK.
