Breaking! U.K. Governments NOT Prepared For Covid Pandemic!
The initial reports and recommendations of the U.K. Covid Inquiry have been released and, in a VERY brief summary, none of the U.K. Governments were prepared for this kind of pandemic.
This is HUGE news, obviously. The cost in lives and economic damage could have been far, far less. There would be far fewer of us now disabled by the virus.
We wanted to make sure you had a link to this. We are also currently following BBC News for updates (this is the link to Live news and may not show Covid Inquiry updates for long.
This news is vindication for those of us who have campaigned for Long Covid, as well as bereaved families. We always wanted to know every part of what happened and this is the beginning. We will scrutinise the findings in detail, but if the U.K. governments were not ready, then our employers certainly were not.
In our view, remedy is needed for keyworkers who are affected by occupational Long Covid. That’s always been our mission from the beginning. We want the government to create a Compensation and Pension Fund for all of us, like the AFCS scheme. We want Long Covid to be declared an occupational disease, so more people can access Industrial Illness Disablement Benefit.
We also want Employment and Equality legislation to be strengthened, so that people discriminated against because of Long Covid and other Covid damage get a better deal. Harassment, bullying, discrimination is ongoing. We know of two cases. The stress often causes additional health conditions and makes existing ones worse. Work doesn’t always improve your health or make you better (perhaps Liz Kendall should speak to us on this one?). Access to Work funding needs to be expanded. Reasonable Adjustments need to be legally enforceable. People denying Long Covid is a disabling condition should be reported for discriminatory speech.
It is also patently obvious that we need two permanent All Party Parliamentary Groups set up at Westminster: One for Chronic and Rare Diseases, as well as Pandemics: Past, Present and Future.
We intended this to be a short update. Oops? But this is a fantastic day. It means the U.K. governments - as we believed from the start - ARE culpable and we suspect more will come out. What does that mean for us? We don’t know yet.
But this battle is not over. #Justice4Keyworkers #HeroesToZeroes