Britain’s coronavirus testing fiasco is a product of herd immunity strategy

Thomas Scripps

Half of the UK’s woefully inadequate COVID-19 testing capacity is going unused, while thousands of virus tests and millions of antibody tests have proved unreliable.

The government claims to have established a daily testing capacity of 40,000 but only half that number is being carried out. Health Secretary Matt Hancock sought to blame the lack of testing on “staff” that “haven’t wanted to come forward.”

In fact, the government is solely to blame for the ongoing catastrophe.

Britain’s 29 regional drive-through testing centres are not located outside or even near hospitals or town centres. Instead they are in city suburbs, off motorways and at airports. This means that those hoping to be tested cannot use public transport or be driven by anyone other than members of their household. There are numerous reports of health care workers having to drive hundreds of miles to reach their nearest site.

A National Health Service worker is tested by a soldier for COVID-19 at a drive-through testing centre in London London. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Geographical problems are combined with other strict limitations. Testing is by appointment only and limited to those who have already been self-isolating at home. Tests must be done within three days of symptoms first showing. Only last Friday were testing centres opened to firefighters, prison officers, the police, and the judiciary, as well as National Health Service (NHS) staff.

The British government’s “testing strategy” has never been based on organising the mass manufacture and distribution of tests throughout the population—beginning with health care and other frontline workers. They have instead been focused on the mass manufacture and distribution of lies.

An important chronology of the UK’s coronavirus response produced by the Byline Times testifies to this reality.

On March 11, NHS England announced plans to increase the rate of testing to 10,000 tests a day. One week later, Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to increase testing to 25,000 a day. At that time, the daily rate was roughly 4,000.

Johnson continued to pull numbers out of thin air, which he knew full well were not going to be achieved. On March 25, he told a press conference, “We are going up from 5,000 to 10,000 tests per day, to 25,000, hopefully very soon up to 250,000 per day.”

In the previous 24 hours, the UK had carried out just 6,583 tests. It had at this time still failed to reach for a single day the original daily target of 10,000—almost a month after the first death in the UK on February 28.

On April 2, Hancock announced that 100,000 tests would be being carried out daily by the end of the month. Three days later, just 13,069 tests were carried out. Two days ago, on April 21, only 22,814 tests were performed—the highest total so far.

Britain is currently ranked 15th out of the 17 countries (with available data) with the worst epidemics for the number of tests per thousand population. At 5.54 per thousand, the UK ranks only above Peru and India.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the chronic lack of testing is that the Johnson government is still set on imposing its policy of herd immunity—through the mass infection of millions of people.

Local councils employ 5,000 environmental health workers with experience in contact tracing, which is crucial to breaking the links of transmission of viruses in the early stages of an epidemic. This critical resource was never deployed. Instead, Public Health England (PHE) made use of just under 300 staff until mid-March, when they abandoned contact tracing altogether.

On March 12, the government switched from a claimed policy of testing every possible case to only testing cases in hospitals. This policy directly contributed to the horrific situation in the UK’s care homes—where thousands of mainly elderly people have died—and to the scores of deaths among key workers.

On April 1, when just 2,000 out of 500,000 frontline NHS workers had been tested, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam admitted to ITV News that testing “is a bit of a side issue to be truthful with you.”

In fact, according to a Daily Telegraph report Wednesday, Public Health England have told labs to stop using the department’s original test and switch to a commercial test. A PHE memo dated April 11 referred to “quality assurance difficulties”—which means that thousands of NHS workers could have been sent back to work with a false negative, while still infected and infectious. The Daily Mail noted yesterday, “NHS labs will continue to use the method but must double check all uncertain results until they can switch to commercial tests.”

Allan Wilson, president of the Institute of Biomedical Science, spoke to Wired about the government’s approach to expanding testing capacity: “There seems no coordination of this ... in fact it seems almost uncoordinated.

“There’s a lab I know in England that had staff in over the [Easter] weekend making DIY swab test kits, because they’d run out.”

Another NHS lab in Northern Ireland had to crowdfund £112,000 to purchase a DNA purification machine which will quintuple their ability to process tests.

Several experts told the Guardian this week that the testing which is currently being carried out is not necessarily helpful from a public health perspective. Professor Sheila Bird, a former member of the Medical Research Council at the University of Cambridge, explained that the failure to break down the numbers by tests of hospital patients, critical workers and family members of critical workers made it impossible to accurately assess the outbreak in the UK.

While ignoring the urgent advice of medical professionals to test, quarantine and contact trace, the government jumped ahead of scientific advice as it advocated a “game changer” antibody test. This was advanced as a “magic bullet” solution which could be used to justify a rapid return to work and shore up the profits of big business. The government admitted earlier this month that it had ordered 17.5 million antibody testing kits, none of which were accurate enough for use. At least 3.5 million unreliable tests have been paid for, with £16 million reportedly given for an order of 2 million kits from China.

Recent research from the UK’s National Covid Testing Scientific Advisory Panel found that the performance of home antibody tests “is inadequate for most individual patient applications.”

Even if a highly accurate test were to be found, on the basis of several preliminary studies, the World Health Organisation estimates that “not more than 2-3 percent” of the global population have been infected with the virus—rising to perhaps 14 percent in Germany and France. Even a small percentage of false positives (informing people who have not had the virus that they have) would therefore give a false and dangerous “all clear” to huge numbers of people.

There is nowhere near sufficient data to prove that these tests would confirm a person’s immunity to reinfection by the virus. Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said April 17, “Right now, we have no evidence that the use of a serological test can show that an individual has immunity or is protected from reinfection.”

With Boris Johnson still ensconced at the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, after nearly dying of COVID-19, Britain’s ruling elite are relying on former Labour prime minister Tony Blair to argue that these concerns should not get in the way of orchestrating a return to work. He told “Good Morning Britain” yesterday, “Even if there is some inaccuracy, I still think the antibody test is a vital part of what we’re trying to do.”

His Institute for Global Change has published a strategy for reopening the economy with a politically manageable death rate, while new Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer continues to press the government for a lockdown “exit strategy.”

World Food Programme warns: COVID-19 pandemic will cause “famines of biblical proportions”

Jean Shaoul

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) warned Tuesday that without urgent action and funding, hundreds of millions of people will face starvation and millions could die as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WFP Executive Director David Beasley told the UN Security Council that in addition to the threat to health posed by the virus, the world faces “multiple famines of biblical proportions within a few short months,” which could result in 300,000 deaths per day—a “hunger pandemic.”

Beasley said that even before the outbreak, the world was “facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II” this year due to many factors. He cited the wars in Syria and Yemen, the crisis in South Sudan and locust swarms across East Africa. He said that coupled with the coronavirus outbreak, famine threatened about three dozen nations.

According to the WFP’s “2020 Global Report on Food Crises” released Monday, 135 million people around the world were already threatened with starvation. Beasley said that as the virus spreads, “an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”

Boxes of food are distributed by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, at a drive thru distribution in downtown Pittsburgh, 10 April, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar]

The regions suffering the most in 2019 were Africa (73 million people “in crisis or worse”) and the Middle East and Asia (43 million people), beset not only with poverty, but also with conflicts and the impact of natural disasters, economic crises and climate change, with the worst locust swarms in decades in East Africa putting 70 million people at risk.

Beasley pointed out that there are already 821 million food-insecure people in the world, a record number. “If we don’t prepare and act now to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade,” he warned, the result could be a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

The 10 worst affected countries are Yemen (15.9 million people “in crisis or worse”), Democratic Republic of the Congo (15.6 million), Afghanistan (11.3 million), Venezuela (9.3 million), Ethiopia (8 million), South Sudan (7 million), Syria (6.6 million), Sudan (5.9 million) northeast Nigeria (5 million) and Haiti (3.7 million). All of these countries are the victims of more than a century of imperialist oppression and exploitation that continues to the present. Most, if not all, continue to suffer from US-led military interventions, economic sanctions or political intrigues that have had devastating social consequences.

In the 55 food-crisis countries that are the focus of the report, a staggering 75 million children are stunted and 17 million suffer from wasting. Beasley said, “Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.”

African countries affected by conflicts are particularly at risk, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria and South Sudan, as well as countries hosting large numbers of refugees such as Lebanon and Uganda.

More than half the population of Yemen and South Sudan, which have endured years of wars, already face acute food shortages even before the virus reaches them. At least 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine, while 80 percent of the country’s 24 million people rely on food aid.

Save the Children estimated last year that at least 75,000 Yemeni children under the age of five have starved to death since the onset of the Saudi-led and US-backed war. Nearly 3.6 million people have been displaced by the conflict.

In South Sudan, there are more than five million people facing starvation and reliant on food aid to survive, and 1.7 million women and children are acutely malnourished.

More than 30 of the world’s poorest countries could experience widespread famine and in 10 of these countries, there are already more than one million people on the brink of starvation.

The WFP said that lockdown measures in the poorest countries, with fragile health care systems and crowded and unsanitary living conditions, would not suffice to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, while depriving millions of workers of an already meagre livelihood and leading to an economic and humanitarian disaster. The near global restrictions on all but essential work and travel are affecting farm workers and disrupting supply chains.

Millions of farmers in Africa and other low-income countries, already facing high levels of food insecurity, are at risk of not being able to work their land and produce food. Of the 257 million hungry people in Africa, most live in rural areas.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa provides a stark example of what is at stake. Small farmers were unable to work their land, sell their products or buy seeds and other essential inputs, leaving more than 40 percent of the agricultural land uncultivated.

The WFP also noted that many of the poorest countries have been hard hit by the collapse of the travel and tourism sectors, with villages in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, for example, almost entirely dependent on tourists and hikers for survival. Others will suffer from the catastrophic fall in remittances (up to 20 percent, according to the World Bank), as migrant workers are furloughed or laid off.

This will affect conflict-torn states such as Somalia, Haiti and South Sudan, and small island nations such as Tonga, with remittances sometimes accounting for more than 30 percent of gross domestic product, as well as larger states such as India, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria and the Philippines, where remittances have become a crucial source of external financing. Flows to sub-Saharan Africa are predicted to fall by 23 percent.

Those particularly at risk include refugees and displaced people living in camps and settlements in cities, as well as the elderly, young children, pregnant and lactating women, and the disabled.

For those whose lives already hang by a thread, the economic impact of the pandemic will push them over the edge. Already there have been reports of food hoarding and price gouging in several sub-Saharan African countries, making food both scarce and unaffordable for those most in need. Anger over food shortages has triggered violent protests across South Africa in the last two weeks, while protests have also started in Lebanon.

In northeast Nigeria, almost three million people are already facing hunger and 440,000 children under five are severely malnourished due to the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency. The risk of hunger is already high in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, while in the Philippines police are enforcing lockdowns at the point of a gun and the government is preparing for a military lockdown as unrest mounts.

In the face of this global catastrophe, Beasley urged the UN Security Council to come forward with a measly $2 billion of aid already pledged but not delivered. He warned that another $350 million was needed just to set up the logistics network to get food and medical supplies—including personal protective equipment—to where it was needed.

This pathetic plea will fall on deaf ears. These sums are a tiny fraction of the trillions the US, the European and other imperialist powers are pouring into tax-dodging corporations and financial institutions to keep them afloat. The only spending the major powers will allocate in relation to the oppressed nations will be to strengthen their military forces for colonial-style interventions to rob these countries of their natural resources and police rising social discontent among workers and poor farmers.

If millions of lives are to be saved in the poorest countries of the world, workers everywhere must take up the struggle to end capitalism and establish a global socialist system based on planned production for need. The development of a socialist political movement of the working class directed against the ruling classes in the imperialist centres and their local agents in the oppressed nations is the only way that the world’s most vulnerable people can be protected against the terrible impact of the pandemic.

Africa-China Reporting Project Public health reporting grants 2020

Application Deadline: 30th April 2020

About the Award: The Project provides capacity building and facilitation in the form of reporting grants, workshops and other opportunities for journalists to investigate complex dynamics and uncover untold stories. Journalists are encouraged to emphasize on-the-ground impact and perspectives to illustrate how the lives of Africa’s people are changing amid the comprehensive phenomenon of Africa-China interactions.
In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing impact in Africa, the Project invites journalists to submit proposals investigating current ground-level responses, capacity, successes/failures, shortcomings, services and collaborations in African countries, communities and organisations.
The following are potential focus areas to guide applicants:

• Current state of preparedness in Africa for the COVID-19 epidemic
• Existing state of public/private health services and programmes in Africa and expected requirements to deal with extreme crises and pandemics such as COVID-19
• Current interaction, exchange and engagement between African and Chinese or foreign health professionals, practitioners, companies and institutions. Application in Africa of knowledge and successful measures used to fight the pandemic in China and elsewhere
• Use of Chinese and other foreign health technology in Africa
• Inspiring role models, humanitarians, innovators and advocates in the current climate of the African public health sector
• Investigations of xenophobia and stigma inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health issues
• Local community health solutions, capacity and measures in African countries
• Application of public health best practices in Africa
• Public health data and measuring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• The impact of media coverage on pandemics and best practices for journalists for covering pandemics
• The economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Lessons for combating the COVID-19 pandemic from previous pandemics and diseases

These are suggested topics but journalists can also pursue others, as long as the focus is within the broad Africa-China public health framework.

Type:  Grants

Eligibility:  Applications are open to all journalists who present Africa-focused proposals. Applicants need not necessarily have previous reporting experience in this area.

Number of Awards:  Not specified

How to Apply: Please address an email with the heading APPLICATION: PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTING GRANT and containing the following items (in attachments in MS Word or PDF formats) to ACRPapplications@gmail.com by no later than 30 April 2020:

• Applicant CV including list of previous reporting
• Proposal for story to be investigated, with a clear proposed headline at the start and a brief report of WHAT will be investigated and HOW, with a methodology for how and where the investigation will be undertaken
• An indication of where the investigation will be published
• A detailed budget with specific line items totalling as much as US$1,500

For any further questions please contact the Project team at ACRPcontact@gmail.com.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

France and COVID-19: Incompetence and Conceit

Patrick Howlett-Martin

On December 31, 2019, the Chinese government informed the World Health Organization of an epidemic of animal origin in Wuhan, reporting similarities to SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, originally appearing in 2002 in the province of Guangdong) and to MERS-CoV (Middle East Repiratory Syndrome, originally appearing in Saudi Arabia in 2012). On January 12, Chinese scientists shared the completely sequenced genome of this new coronavirus with the entire international scientific community.

The epidemic had already killed 80 people in China and thousands were infected. The city of Wuhan (11 million inhabitants) and the province of Hubei (60 million inhabitants the city of Wuhan included) were isolated on January 25-26. Factories, offices, stores, schools, universities, museums, and airports were all closed down.Urban transportation in the city was significantly reduced. As a precaution, the authorities extended the Chinese New Year vacation by one week (January 23-31) to cover the incubation period for the virus among the inhabitants of Wuhan who left the city and could have been infected. They set up shelter hospitals (“fangcang”) in gymnasiums, conference centers, hotels, and other facilities to separate the symptomatic and the likely-infected from their healthy relatives. With the number of ill people exceeding local hospital capacity, the authorities set up two 1,200-bed hospitals in fifteen days and summoned medical and voluntary nursing personnel from all over China. More than 42,000 healthcare personnel responded. Despite the use of Personal Protective Equipment, 4.4% of them (3,387) had tested positive and 23 had died as of April 3 according to the Chinese Red Cross. The lockdown was strict and neighborhood committees were mobilized to ensure food deliveries to the inhabitants. Masks were requisitioned and distributed to the population. Street fixtures and furniture were disinfected, even banknotes were disinfected. The average age of the ill was 55 and 56% of them were men. No case of infection was reported in anyone under the age of 15.

All this information was shared in international medical journals by Chinese doctors and researchers starting on February 20. The creation of hospitals ex nihilo in the space of a fortnight was given ample coverage in the media but the French authorities did not appreciate the gravity of the implications: they preferred to view the initiative as the Chinese marketing their public works. In mid-January, COVID-19 cases were recorded in Bangkok, Tokyo, and Seoul. Thermal sensors were installed in the airports of China, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. On January 26, the authorities in Hong Kong cancelled all sports and cultural events. A testing campaign began in the city on February 18.

And what of France? On January 24, the Ministry of Health announced that three patients coming from China had been hospitalized with the coronavirus. The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) outlined two scenarios for the spread of COVID-19: one high-risk, the other low-risk. Given air traffic, the countries estimated to be the most exposed were Germany and the United Kingdom. Italy was not even mentioned. The Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn, commented on the INSERM scenarios that same day as she left the Council of Ministers: “the risk of secondary infection from an imported case is very low and the risk of propagation of the virus in the population is also very low.”

On January 30, France repatriated 250 French citizens and 100 European immigrants from Wuhan, putting them in quarantine in southern France. On February 10, a British citizen coming from Singapore infected five other people in the small Alpine ski resort of Contamines-Montjoie. A summary screening did not detect other cases at the resort. The infected were hospitalized. Buzyn reminded us on that occasion that “the risk of infection is very low; only close and sustained contact with an infected person can increase it.”

At that point, with 900 reported dead in China, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made clear reference to the danger of global propagation, “we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

But in France the authorities—duly warned but strangely untroubled—took no particular measures. On March 6, while at the theatre with his wife, President Macron stated, “Life goes on. There is no reason, except for the more vulnerable members of the population, to change our outing habits.” His aim was to encourage the French to continue to go out despite the coronavirus epidemic and the lack of protective masks. That same day, the Italian government decided to lock down Lombardy, extending the provision to the entire country the following day. While Macron was enjoying the performance, there were 613 cases of coronavirus in France and the number was doubling every three days (roughly the same rate recorded by Chinese physicians in Wuhan in January and seen in South Korea and Italy). Extrapolating this exponential growth, it could be estimated that on March 16 there would be approximately 6,500 cases; the final official figure was 6,633.

The French government was all focused on the pension reform, president Macron’s top priority. Protests were organized in all French cities: retirees, railway workers, physicians, lawyers, fire fighters, and students all took to the streets. The demonstrations were violently suppressed by the police. Economists were in unanimous agreement—a rare event—that the proposed reform would harm all categories of worker except those in the upper income brackets. Sociologists warned the government about the deepening social schisms, as had been thrust into the public eye earlier with the 12 months revolt of the gilets jaunes [yellow vests]. These protests had been staged every Saturday for nearly a year in all cities in France, drawing in a broad range of the hardest-hit social and occupational categories, a large portion of whom were pensioners. But all for naught: on Saturday afternoon, February 29, with the chamber of the Assemblée nationale -where the debate on the bill was taking place—almost empty because of the of the day, the government seized the opportunity of the COVID-19 pandemic to pass pension reform by constitutional decree. On that date, gatherings of more than 900 people were prohibited because of COVID-19. The authorities no longer risked protests by the people in the street.

But the Macron administration did not stop there. Against the advice of the medical team and the stadium manager, it authorized a Juventus–Olympique Lyonnais football match for the Round of 16 in the Champions League. Three thousand Italian fans were in Lyon on February 26: at that time Italy had 21 coronavirus deaths and 900 people infected. Dr. Marcel Garrigou-Grandchamp, who had warned the new Minister of Health on the morning of the match, published an opinion piece on the website of the Fédération des Médecins de France on March 31, where he spoke of an “explosion” in coronavirus cases in the Département du Rhône some two weeks after the OL–Juventus match. A similar sequence of events had taken place in Italy with the Atalanta B.C. – Valencia match on February 19, termed a “bomba biologica” by many Italian physicians. It was March 4, fifteen days after the match, that the number of cases in the Lombard city of Bergamo exploded, making it the most heavily impacted city in Italy. Walter Ricciardi, Italian representative to the WHO, acknowledged that the match had been a “catalyst for the propagation of the virus”. The Paris-Nice 8-stage professional cycling race was held as scheduled from March 8th to the 15th. More significantly, the government confirmed the first phase of municipal elections on March 15, after it had ordered the closure of schools and universities on March 12 and the shutdown of most stores, bars, and restaurants on March 14. There are 34,000 communes in France that had to organize the elections with local volunteers: volunteers and voters without adequate protection—there were no masks available. The government had requisitioned them for hospital personnel, where the shortage was critical. Half of the voters stayed home for safety’s sake. To make matters worse, Agnès Buzyn announced her candidacy for mayor of Paris on February 16, less than one month before the election, to take the place of the government’s candidate, Benjamin Griveaux, who had been discredited when an explicit video he had sent to a young woman was posted online. Buzyn left the Ministry of Health in the middle of the Coronavirus crisis. The healthcare workers who had organized numerous strikes over the previous eleven months to protest the deterioration of public hospitals felt belittled. Losing by a wide margin, Buzyn declared in an interview for Le Monde that the election had been a “masquerade”. The lockdown was not ordered until the day after the elections, politique oblige.

The new Minister of Health, Olivier Vérant, a member of parliament with the party in power, took up the government’s mantra, one that every minister and secretary of state is expected to chant in unison: “masks are useless, the tests are unreliable”. They all swear by handwashing and lockdowns. No reference is made to the way things had been handled in Seoul, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, where free masks were distributed and people were required to wear them, and large-scale testing was carried out, and where economic life goes on, in slow motion, but it goes on. Today, with 23 million inhabitants, Taiwan has recorded 6 COVID-19 deaths; Hong Kong, with 7 million inhabitants, has lost 4. As for the French doctors who were in Wuhan working alongside their Chinese colleagues and thus well informed, they were not even consulted.

The French police stop and fine transgressors, solitary walkers or joggers, while the metro, airports, trams, and buses are all operating and supermarkets and tobacconists are open for business. The police are themselves without masks and many fall victim to the virus, becoming potential carriers. The same is true of healthcare and administrative personnel, working without personal protective equipment in retirement homes. The authorities refused to report the number of victims among healthcare workers, citing “medical secrecy” concerns. The elderly die but are not counted in the official statistics. Nor are those who die at home. Now that their numbers are so high and can no longer be ignored, we discover that the residents of these retirement homes account for 40% of the deaths recorded in France. They are not hospitalized. Their treatment? Paracetamol for the mildly afflicted, morphine for the rest. Close to half of the nursing staff in retirement homes are affected by the epidemic. But the government is powerless: it does not have sufficient testing solution and will not allow tests to be conducted in retirement homes unless there is a confirmed case there. Ubuesque!

The borders remain open. President Macron refuses to close the border with Italy, which the leader of the Rassemblement National party, Marine Le Pen has been demanding since February 26. For the Head of State, the problem posed by the epidemic “can only be resolved through perfect European and international cooperation.” The events of the following days would quickly contradict this wishful thinking. Every country has closed in on itself. But not France. There are no health controls at French airports, train stations, or ports. Not even today, April 18, 2020, when the official death toll has reached 18,000. In the worksite next to my home, Italian workmen come to work, without protective equipment, every morning on the 7:35 train from Ventimiglia, getting off at the Gare d’Eze: no checks when they depart, no checks when they arrive. Italy has now officially recorded more than 23,660 deaths. On its April 18 evening newscast, the television station Antenne 2 aired the report by journalist Charlotte Gillard, who had taken an Air France flight from Paris to Marseille: the plane was packed, not a free seat, the passengers did not have masks, no one’s temperature was checked on either departure or arrival.

We gradually learn from news reported in the press that France currently has no stores of masks or test kits. For economic reasons—annual savings of 30 million euros—the country’s strategic stocks were depleted in 2012 and never replenished. On the eve of 2020, when the coronavirus epidemic began to spread, France’s supplies consisted of zero FFP2 masks, 117 million adult surgical masks, and 40 million pediatric masks! The hospitals are experiencing critical mask shortages. The nursing staff in retirement homes have no protection (no gloves, no masks, no sanitizing gel). There is no more sanitizing gel available in pharmacies or stores. Doctors and nurses do not have the equipment they need. As for hospitals, they have neither enough beds nor enough ventilators to adequately cope with the epidemic.

The French authorities do not admit it publicly. And they seem to drag their feet for reasons that are impossible to grasp. They did not expect this. And when it began to materialize, they denied it for reasons that can only be called conceit, a traditional mark of distinction among the French political elite. The French regions authorities, realizing the government deficiencies, order and purchase their supplies directly from China. When they arrive, they are requisitioned by the state: thus 4 million masks that were ordered from China by Bourgogne-Franche-Comté for the nursing staff in its retirement homes were confiscated on the tarmac of the Basel-Mulhouse airport by the police on April 4, using methods that would make a gangster blush. As for the rare mayors who have stocks of personal protective equipment and graciously make them available to the local population, requiring the use of masks, they are taken to court by the Ministry of the Interior, which wants to preserve its royal prerogatives. On April 16, the Council of State, the highest administrative body in France, asserted its regal status by limiting the power of mayors. The decision calls to mind its role in 1942-1944 during the Vichy regime. It stays true to itself; it serves the State, not the Nation.

The nurses in the intensive care units in Paris hospitals report that given the shortage of beds and ventilators, they are essentially practicing battlefield medicine. This means there is a triage among the sick, choosing between those considered too old and those the doctors feel have a better chance of recovery. It is no coincidence that the two European countries least afflicted by the pandemic are well-equipped Austria and Germany, which have not, so far, experience a shortage of beds or ventilators. In France, veterinarians are lending their ventilators to hospitals! Instead of nationalizing private clinics as they have done in Ireland, they transport patients long distances in medical trains, helicopters, or buses to less congested hospitals in the province or abroad (Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg), increasing the possibility of infecting healthcare personnel and the risk of death. The statistics are biased because patients over the age of 75 do not have access to the ICU services: this is a sad fact for retirement homes.

It was not until March 28 that the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced: “More than a billion masks have been ordered from France and other countries for the coming weeks and months.” This was the man who a few days earlier repeated publicly, in a sort of litany, that masks were useless.

In its decision of April 15 on the screening and protection of the elderly, the Council of State revealed the extent of the disaster. Assailed by associations demanding that people living in retirement homes and their caregivers be systematically tested and that protective equipment (masks, sanitizing gel) be distributed, the Council of State limited itself to reciting the paltry figures promulgated by the government (“40,000 tests per day will be available across the country by the end of April; 60,000 will be available in the weeks to come”). So in mid-May, France will be ready to do close to what Germany has already been doing since a month and a half: 500,000 tests per week. As for masks, the “current orders amount to some 50 million masks”. However, give the delivery rate, it will take nine months to receive them all.

There are 430,000 healthcare personnel and 752,000 pensioners in retirement homes and health centers. All told, there are close to a million healthcare professionals (210,000 active doctors and 700,000 nurses and nursing assistants) in France.

Under these conditions, it is clear that Macron’s announcement of the end of the lockdown and the resumption of school classes on May 11 is a gamble. If all teachers were to return to the classroom, that would mean 870,000 masks per day—reuse of masks is contraindicated. And if all the students return on this date, or even gradually, they would have to be supplied with more than 12 million masks per day.

Even with the President publicizing the “grand public” mask, a French invention no doubt handcrafted locally, the end of the lockdown on May 11 and the resumption of school classes is at best a gamble; without reliable masks to protect the entire population, it is a risky and irresponsible act.

The end of a health crisis that the authorities did not anticipate will be all the more painful for the French, both fiscally and socially, with the President and his administration coming out of this ordeal diminished and wholly discredited.

COVID-19 Pandemic: India Fourth Worst Affected Country In Asia

P. S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal

Worldwide 168 Countries Have Fewer Cases, Deaths Than India

The grim message conveyed by the title of this article should make rulers in India sit up. Their initial complacency coupled with child-like attitude of being contended with the fact that Indians are better off than their counterparts in Europe and North America is the most mean, inhuman and unscientific way of dealing with COVID-19 pandemic. As a first step those at the helm of affairs in India should visit the following website daily for an update on where humanity stands: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

This clarificatory note becomes necessary in the context of COVID-19 pandemic and India. The daily hourly news broadcasted (6 AM to 11 PM) on the state-controlled All India Radio gives a 10-minutes account – over a dozen times per day – of firstly developments in India and secondly, a passing, reference occasionally to what the rest of the developed world is going through; all the negativities of the countries in Europe and North America are highlighted. A few 1-hourly special broadcasts (8AM, 2PM, 8PM) are aired every day with reporting being aggressively nationalistic and exclusionist. The single projected leader of the country is praised no end for his benevolence e.g. sending Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to countries who have requested or not requested this drug of dubious role; and very ordinary people singing praises – by way of being quoted in these programmes – for receiving a few hundred rupees or so in their bank accounts courtesy the only leader of the country under this scheme or that scheme. Scores of doctors remind the listeners to maintain social distancing and wear a mask. There is not a word of criticism aired by any of these worthies about the policy being pursued in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Indians are reminded ad infinitum by a particular bureaucrat – a Joint Secretary to boot – in the Union Health Ministry to be content with the fact that many countries in Europe and USA have more cases and deaths than in India. Some questions and comments are in order:

• Are Indians supposed to feel happy/contended that others in developed countries are suffering and are worse off than Indians?
• Why does the Indian Government not display courage and honesty to admit that about 168 countries have fewer cases and fewer deaths than India? Why not learn from their experience?
• An impression is being given that aggressive lockdown is the brainchild of Indian Government; the scientific way in which China has used it for full 77 days is never acknowledged.
• That lockdown and massive testing (as undertaken in China) together gives the best results; yet such testing was delayed in India.
• That countries with massive testing (South Korea) undertaken right at the early stage of the infection got good results.
• That countries without complete lockdown but full voluntary compliance of social distancing, use of mask have also fared better (Sweden).
• The All India Radio has been constantly bombarding us with the information that half of India does not have any infection; but we are never informed that it was northern Italy which bore the brunt and not its southern part; just as South Korea had huge number of cases, while North Korea escaped unscathed because of early closure/sealing of its international borders.
• The Chinese scientist had shared the genome structure of n-Coronavirus publicly on 10-11 January, 2020; the German medical scientist reportedly had the testing kits ready – hold your breath – by 16 January, 2020! Three months down the line the Indian Government is still struggling to get these kits imported!! Who all have then been found sleeping when India had sufficient time to be fully geared to face the COVID-19 pandemic? Those medical scientists, bureaucrats and politicians need to be named.

PM Narendra Modi hugs Donald Trump at Ahmedabad airport / Photo: @narendramodi / Twitter

Both leaders – President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met in Delhi on 25 February, 2020 for signing business deals including defense deals. Were these leaders oblivious to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic?

The real heroes/heroines in the resistance against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic

The medical personnel – doctors, nurses, para medicals; sanitation workers; social workers e.g. ASHA workers involved in door-to-door surveys for detecting those people with flu-like symptoms; ensuring their isolation and quarantine at home; tracing of people in contact with positive cases or those with travel history are performing a thankless job. The medical personnel in clinics/hospitals are risking their lives to contain the spread of the virus; often working without the full personal protection gear; getting infected in the process and braving death. They are the real heroes/heroines in the national task.

Ethanol and Hunger in India

K.P. Sasi

With more than 200 million hungry people, India is the home to the largest number of hungry people in the world.  More than 190 million people in India sleep without food daily. One out of 4 to 5 children in India is malnourished. Malnourished people are prone to different diseases much more easily than the nourished lot. Needless to say that this population of hungry people in India can be seen as the most threatened section due to COVID -19. While the number of deaths and suicides due to the lockdown is increasing among the poor in India, the real figures of indirect deaths due to the lockdown  are either not estimated properly or not being reported properly. But our Government has come out with a beautiful solution to India’s hunger. Since there is a contrast between overfilled stock of grains in India, this stock of surplus food grain is going to be used for the production of ethanol to produce sanitizers to fight COVID-19! Let the hungry people in this country feed themselves on ethanol at least !

India has millions of tonnes of grain reserve, while millions of people are hungry. The Food Corporation of India has 77 million tonnes of food grains, four times more than the buffer stock. A portion of this stock can be used to deal with the existing hunger in India. But there is a need for a political will for that. It is in the context of the severe threat of hunger due to lockdown that the Government of India has decided to convert part of its rice stock for producing alcohol-based hand sanitisers to fight COVID-19. The Government actions to deal with the requirement of food for the migrant labour and India’s poor is already subjected to criticisms at an international level. In 13 states during the lock-down period, NGOs and civil society actions fed more hungry people than the Government. In Gujarat, the NGOs fed 93% of the people who were provided meals. This is what Modi’s Gujarat model is all about. So, why contribute to the Government when better results are provided by NGOs and civil society actions?

21,000 people in the world die daily in the world due to hunger and the largest section of them are from Asia and Africa. Hunger is still much bigger issue than any COVID-19, and the Corona virus is only an added problem to the hungry population.  No Government has undertaken any systematic and committed action to solve the problem of hunger.

I have heard an upper class, upper caste woman telling her husband about their eight year old son: `I think he has some problem these days. He doesn’t eat properly. He ate only 7 idlies today morning !’

Over eating has been creating serious health problems in the developed world. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody tells me that COVID-19 has hit the Americans most because of their overeating and subsequent health disorders due to overeating. A section of the middle class with pretensions on their social consciousness in India, tell their children: People are dying in this country due to hunger. So, don't waste your food.'. The education given is:Since people are dying without food, the solution is just eat the food yourself! Do not question your Government on the irony between overstocked grains and the existing hunger. Do not question the Government on the large amounts of wastage of food. Do not demand for an equitable and sustainable distribution of food and wealth. Do not question the corporate powers on the contamination of food with deadly chemicals. Do not question the communal fascists who try their level best to divide our people on communal lines through food. Do not question the Government’s misuse of public money in the purchase and production of arms instead of feeding its hungry electorate. The social education to our children remain as `let the charity begin and end with our own stomachs.’

Just the wastage of resources by our Government is enough to feed India’s hungry people. Our expensive world’s biggest statues, our costs on militarisation, armaments, bombs and their research by utilization of a large section of skills and expertise of the scientists and technically skilled people, the economic costs of human rights violations, our wastage of resources on international travels and tours of a small section of our leaders to make international deals and contracts to sell India’s natural resources, the economic costs of destruction of India’s land, water and forests, the failure to deal with large number of farmers’ suicides, our insufficient public health services, corporate control of India’s agricultural economy and displacement of a large section of our population from their own lands and similar other issues must become as a focus of education for our youth in order to make them understand the relationship of their own food with the rest of the society. It is time that our own children see the connections between their food and India’s burning issues. It is the privilege of the well-fed people to ignore the most burning issues related to food and health. The reality is that one climate change is enough to break this pretension.

And in this hour of darkness, it is time to think fresh on why COVID-19 has left such a big scar on India’s integrity to its own people. Let us hope we will not let this scar to grow into a bigger disaster threatening our democracy, justice and peace.

Real jobless rate could reach 30 percent in Australia

Mike Head

A report by a business and government-backed think tank has effectively undercut efforts by Australian governments to cover up the mass unemployment caused by the coronavirus crisis and its devastating impact, especially on low-paid and casualised workers.

The Grattan Institute report, released on April 19, calls into question the claims of the Liberal-National government and the bipartisan “national cabinet” of state and territory leaders that the government’s unprecedented $130 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme will keep unemployment down to 10 percent.

Titled Shutdown: estimating the COVID-19 employment shock, the report states: “Using our preferred method of estimating the job shock, we estimate that about 3.43 million Australians could be out of work as a result of the response to COVID-19. If all of these people were classified as ‘unemployed’, the unemployment rate would rise to 30.2 percent . ” That would be nearly 3.5 million jobless workers.

As the report explains, this reality will be disguised because “not all the people who lose work as a result of COVID-19 will be classed as unemployed.” Some will receive pay from their employer via the JobKeeper program “even if they’re not at work.” Many others will be forced into reduced hours, some will drop out of the workforce and others will not be counted because the official unemployment statistics exclude anyone working as little as an hour a week.

Even so, “the crisis will have an enduring impact on jobs and the economy for years to come. More than half of all workers in the hospitality industry could lose their livelihoods, as will many workers in retail, education, and the arts.”

While saying it is too early to reliably gauge the true figure, the report says its upper estimates would indicate the highest jobless levels “since the Great Depression in the 1930s.” And there would be no quick turnaround. “History tells us that recovery from periods of high unemployment is rarely fast.”

The report indicates that the pandemic’s impact is exacerbating poverty and social inequality. It states: “Lower-income workers are twice as likely to be out of work as high-income earners. Younger Australians and women are also likely to be hit harder, because they are more likely to work in occupations and industries most affected by the shutdowns.”

According to the report, about 40 percent of low-paid workers—those on less than $150 a week in personal income—are likely to be thrown out of work. By contrast, people earning more than $3,000 per week have less than half the risk of losing work.

The lower a person’s income, the more likely their job is at risk. That was “predictable” because industries like hospitality and retail require workers to be in close contact with other people, whereas professional jobs generally usually involve less “proximity to other people and more can be done from home.”

Nearly 40 percent of workers in the hospitality industries, including restaurants and accommodation, were short-term, casual workers who will be ineligible for the JobKeeper program. The “arts and recreation services” industry followed closely behind hospitality.

This will mean widespread impoverishment. The report notes: “Many Australians are poorly placed to support themselves through a substantial period of little or no income.” It cites research showing that “half of working households had less than $7,000 in the bank before this crisis” and had “5.6 weeks’ income or less in the bank.” Even worse, “a quarter of all working households have less than one weeks’ income in the bank.”

The JobKeeper scheme excludes about 1.1 million casual workers, international students and 1.4 million foreign workers on temporary visas. Moreover, the payments to employers do not start until next month. Many businesses, particularly smaller ones, will not survive until then. Other employers may keep workers on their books but exploit the scheme to slash their wages to $1,500 a fortnight—the level of the wage subsidy—and impose deep cuts to conditions, such as leave entitlements and penalty pay rates.

One indicator of the actual lack of employment prospects was that the average number of weekly job posts on the hiring website “Indeed” at the start of April was 50 percent below where it was at the same time in 2019.

Grattan researchers used a range of methods to estimate the size of the “employment shock” and cautioned that the precise magnitude remained unclear, both in Australia and internationally. But even if the JobSeeker wage subsidies hid some of the impact, the official unemployment rate would likely rise to between 10 and 15 percent.

Another report this week gave some idea of the reality behind the JobSeeker scheme. A special survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found between the first week of March and the first week of April, nearly 400,000 workers lost their jobs, and three million more lost working hours.

So far, the federal and state governments, Liberal-National and Labor Party like, have handed more than $325 billion to big business and the banks, including $130 billion via JobSeeker, since the coronavirus triggered the current crisis. But the Grattan Institute implores governments to go further. The economic shock from COVID-19 “is going to be so big” that more business rescue packages will be needed, although the report makes no specific proposals.

The Grattan report warns that the economic breakdown is not solely a product of the domestic lock down measures. It notes this month’s IMF World Economic Outlook, which forecasts the global economy to contract by 4.2 percent in 2020, with a 6.7 percent contraction in Australia.

The report states: “Sharp slowdowns in demand among Australia’s major trading partners will sharply reduce demand for Australian exports. For example, the Chinese economy contracted by 6.8 percent in the March quarter of 2020, compared to the same period a year earlier.

“Economists at the Reserve Bank of Australia have estimated that a 5 percentage point decline in Chinese GDP alone would reduce GDP growth in Australia by up to 2.5 percent. Australia’s other major trading partners are likely to record similarly severe economic contractions in the June quarter of 2020.”

In addition, the prolonged closure of the country’s borders would choke off a large share of Australia’s economic growth in recent years—net overseas migration.

The Grattan report shows why the corporate elite and its political servants in parliament, like their international counterparts, are pushing for a premature return to work, despite the worsening worldwide pandemic. They must seek to extract the cost of the breakdown out of the labour power of workers, and exploit the crisis to accelerate the decades-long assault on social spending and workers’ jobs, wages and conditions.

Australia’s national cabinet continues back-to-work push

Oscar Grenfell

Following a meeting yesterday of the national cabinet, Prime Minister Scott Morrison touted a limited easing of restrictions put in place when the corovarius pandemic hit Australia in February as another step on the “road out” out of the current crisis.

The national cabinet, composed of state and territory leaders and the federal government, has in recent weeks spearheaded a push for an end to lockdown measures, which have been denounced by sections of big business as an impediment to their profit-making activities. After its meeting last Thursday, Morrison declared that all restrictions would be reviewed in four weeks time.

Speaking to the media yesterday, Morrison reiterated May 11 as the date for such a review. He did announce, however, that level two and some level three elective surgeries and medical procedures would be resumed beginning next week.

This is particularly aimed at ensuring a continued flow of revenue to private hospitals and medical facilities, which account for almost half of health coverage across the country after decades of cuts to the public system.

Private hospitals have already been the recipient of an effective government bailout, forecast to cost at least $1.3 billion. Earlier this month the government announced a plan to “integrate” the private and public systems because of low capacity in public hospitals. The measure provides hundreds of millions of dollars to private facilities, without in any way impinging on their profit imperatives.

Despite the relatively modest character of yesterday’s announcement, Morrison declared that it was “an important decision because it marks another step on the way back. There is a road back.”

That the national cabinet did not announce a more drastic easing of restrictions may be due to ongoing indications of community transmission of the virus, despite claims that the “curve of infections” has been “flattened.”

The possibility of rapid COVID-19 outbreaks was underscored by the emergence of a cluster of cases in Tasmania over the past week-and-a-half that resulted in the closure of two hospitals and the quarantining of 1,200 health workers. At least 72 medical staff and 23 patients were infected.

Countries previously touted as models to be emulated, such as Singapore, have witnessed a large spike in cases after removing restrictions on the basis that infection rates had declined.

State and federal governments are doubtless fearful that an aggressive, enforced return-to-work will produce widespread opposition. Already there is substantial ferment among construction workers and teachers, who have been forced to stay on the job by governments and the trade unions, despite the risks to their health. Polls over the past week have shown that at least half the population thinks it is too soon to relax the lockdown measures.

There is also a debate within the ruling elite on how best to advance its interests. This week, more than 250 economists, including former Reserve Bank and Treasury officials, issued an open letter warning that “it would be a mistake to expect a premature loosening of restrictions to be beneficial to the economy and jobs, given the rapid rate of contagion.”

Other sections of the political establishment, however, are pressing for a rapid return to work, whatever the costs to the lives and health of workers. Their views were crudely summed up by University of New South Wales economist Gigi Foster, who declared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Q&A” program last Monday that it would have been better if no lockdown measures had been imposed, even if this had resulted in a “very extreme epidemic.”

Foster also promoted the discredited “herd immunity” strategy, under which governments deliberately allow mass coronavirus infections. This program, which is not supported by any scientific or medical evidence, has resulted in mass deaths in Britain.

Other financial commentators have published articles proclaiming that the cost to business of the lockdown measures has been too great, even when weighed against the thousands of deaths that otherwise may have occurred.

As it is, the push for a return to work appears to be proceeding at this stage primarily through the easing of restrictions at a state level. Yesterday morning, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced that face-to-face teaching would resume on May 11, with students initially attending school one day a week.

Berejiklian invoked the dubious claim that school students are less likely to contract and transmit COVID-19 than others. She declared that the staged character of the reopening would mean that only a quarter of students would be on a school campus at any one time. The premier did not attempt to explain why such limitations would be necessary, if, as she has asserted, the risk of the virus spreading at schools is low.

In reality, one of the largest clusters of the virus in New Zealand emerged at a school in Auckland earlier this month. Prior to the conclusion of term one in Australia, a number of schools in NSW and South Australia were forced to close after infections were detected. The reason for the urgency to reopen the schools is that it is viewed as essential to forcing workers back onto the job.

The May 11 date for NSW schools reopening is significant, coinciding with the end of Victoria’s “state of emergency,” and the national review of lockdown measures. This indicates that behind the scenes, plans for an easing of restrictions are more advanced than has publicly been acknowledged.

The content of these discussions was hinted at by Western Australian Labor health minister Roger Cooke. In declaring that his government was preparing to roll back restrictions and that the hospital system was “ready” for an outbreak, Cooke reiterated that the national strategy was not for the elimination of coronavirus, but its suppression.

Attempting to eradicate COVID-19, Cooke said, would “set you up for 12 months or 18 months of complete isolation, and I think ultimately we want the Western Australian community and economy to be much more open in relation to that.” Instead the virus should be kept at a “controllable level,” so that measures could be taken to “rejuvenate the economy.”

The primary concern of governments and the corporate elites they represent is now “economic growth,” by ensuring the profits of big business and the banks. To that end, state and federal governments have rolled-out stimulus measures, transferring hundreds of billions to the largest corporations, while doing virtually nothing for the record number of workers who have been left unemployed.

The ruling class views the current crisis as an opportunity to impose a further pro-business restructuring of workplaces, centred on the destruction of conditions and “surplus” positions. To that end, editorials and comments in the financial press, including today’s Australian, have urged governments to act on the “opportunity” presented by the pandemic.

The implications were underscored by Virgin Australia’s announcement yesterday that it had entered into voluntary administration. The move imperils the jobs of over 16,000 workers at the airline, which will be restructured to make it more attractive to private equity firms and potential shareholders.

Federal government representatives, who resisted calls for a bailout of Virgin, have declared that the announcement does not mark the end of the airline, but will result in it being more “efficient” and “sustainable,” code words for it being transformed into a more profitable enterprise through ruthless cost-cutting.

Australia Post yesterday announced a major overhaul of its operations, including the reduction of metropolitan letter delivery services from daily to every second day, an extension of delivery times for intrastate letters and the abolition of the priority mail letter product. The company has not yet announced any sackings, but the statements of its executives, who have described the move as the largest restructuring in its history, signify that retrenchments are on the agenda.

Kazakhstan: Hospital workers demand resignation of government official over spread of COVID-19

David Levine

The Central Municipal Clinical Hospital in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, was shut down last week after 182 staff members tested positive for the SARS-Cov-2 virus, the coronavirus which causes COVID-19. Many patients also have tested positive.

Dr. Ernar Pirimkhan told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Liberty outlet: “Ninety-eight percent of the employees in the surgery department, where I work, have tested positive for the virus.” Shortly after the interview, Pirimkhan also tested positive.

The hospital had been staffed by approximately 1,000 workers. Of the infected workers, some were transferred to a Ministry of Internal Affairs convalescent facility, while others have remained within the hospital itself, which has been placed under quarantine. The head physician was fired on April 14.

The hospital shutdown was accompanied by intense conflict between state officials and health care workers. Almaty’s chief public health officer, Aizat Moldagasimova, had told a television news station on April 12 that medical workers themselves were at fault for the spread of the infection. She was recorded as saying, “One of the causes is medical workers’ own lack of compliance with safety measures. They haven’t had the vigilance that they’re supposed to have. Perhaps they thought that this is a clinic for non-infectious diseases. Perhaps they hoped that there wouldn’t actually be so many patients.”

The video clip containing Moldagasimova’s statement was subsequently removed from the television station’s website, but many Internet users saved it and disseminated it on social media. In response, hospital doctors and other staff demanded that Moldagasimova be removed from office. In an announcement posted on Facebook on April 13, gynecology department head Gaukhar Amireyeva declared that she and 32 other doctors plan to sue Moldagasimova for defamation.

The medical workers insist that the confusing information and lack of supplies from the city Health Department led to the situation: Initially, the hospital was not designated as a facility that would receive coronavirus patients. Health care workers were therefore neither given the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) nor expecting to receive COVID-19 patients. However, ambulances were ordered by the city health department to take people suspected of being positive to the hospital, which had been left unprepared to deal with them.

One doctor told RFE/RL: “Ambulance workers clad in [personal protective equipment (PPE)] brought the patients with fever and symptoms of pneumonia to our hospital’s internal-diseases department...transporting them through a common corridor. It’s an airborne infection [and] many employees in the department got infected. We tried to isolate the department as much as we could. [Eventually,] we got protective clothing.”

In a blatant attempt to suppress criticism and opposition by the workers, authorities hospitalized Amireyeva on April 14, one day after the letter demanding Moldagasimova’s resignation was issued, despite the fact that she had tested negative for the virus the previous day and was in good health. These efforts backfired as Amireyeva’s supporters video recorded her attempted hospitalization and then spread those videos on social media as well. The city government quickly released her and issued a public apology, claiming that her name had accidentally been confused with the name of another worker at the hospital who happens to bear the same initials.

The confrontation between health care workers and the government comes as the country, whose first COVID-19 case appeared on March 13, has been in a national state of emergency since March 15. Severe lockdown and social distancing measures have been enacted in the country’s major cities, including Almaty, Nur-Sultan, and Shymkent. While the official total number of cases in the country as of April 21 was 1,995, with 19 deaths, the government’s response to the crisis has been characterized by extreme inconsistency, disarray, and repressive control over news sources and any travel by citizens outside their homes.

Among other measures, video surveillance systems have been activated in the cities to ensure that people leaving their homes do so only within the strict boundaries of shelter-in-place orders.

As of April 17, 423, or approximately one-quarter, of the country’s coronavirus cases were among medical personnel, with over half of those cases in Almaty. Almaty’s Children’s Municipal Clinical Hospital for Infectious Diseases also reported 30 positive tests among hospital staff.

Conditions similar to those confronting health care workers at the Central Municipal Clinical Hospital in Almaty prevail across the country and internationally.

Tolkynay Ordabayeva, an infectious disease specialist from Jambyl Region told RFE/RL that she came to work on April 2 and 3 with a high fever from COVID-19 because she was the only such specialist available in the Merki District, which is home to nearly 85,000 people. She went on to explain that nurses had been compelled to make their own masks as hospital supplies ran low; she had received dirty PPE from hospital administration; and that she had been compelled to release coronavirus patients without testing due to a deficit of tests.

Similar horrifying reports about conditions in hospitals have emerged from the US, which has the highest number of recorded cases of any country in the world; Great Britain, where over 100 health care workers have died from COVID-19; and Russia, where nurses and doctors have walked out of their jobs for lack of PPE. Mass protests by health care workers have also taken place in Latin America .

The Kazakh government is acutely aware of these rising class tensions internationally and is exercising strict control over information on the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic. A government website on the pandemic, www.coronavirus2020.kz , contains a “Fake News and Fact-checking” section that, among other matters, reported on April 5 that a health care worker was arrested for allegedly spreading false information.

The Kazakhstan economy is expected to shrink precipitously, not only as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but also due to the drop in oil prices. The government has promised a 42,500 tenge (about US$99) monthly subsidy during the state of emergency to all workers and self-employed individuals who have either lost their jobs or been forced into temporary leave. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, as of April 17, 6.7 million people had applied for the meager payment (i.e., more than one third of the country’s total population) and 3.5 million had already received it. The total amount of emergency government subsidies paid to individuals will be many times exceeded by emergency government subsidies to businesses, which are expected to run in several trillions of tenge.