Yoshihide Suga replaces Abe as Japanese prime minister

Ben McGrath

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected Yoshihide Suga as its new president on Monday, ensuring his selection as prime minister today in the National Diet. Suga will finish out Shinzo Abe’s term as party leader, which ends in September 2021. Abe announced his resignation as prime minister and LDP president on August 28, citing poor health.

Suga won 377 out of 534 votes from eligible electors, which consisted of 393 LDP legislators and 141 regional representatives. Suga had served as Abe’s chief cabinet secretary since December 2012 and received the backing of five out of seven party factions, including the two largest, led respectively by Hiroyuki Hosoda and Finance Minister Taro Aso, who will retain his position under Suga.

Suga’s installation is regarded as a continuation of Abe’s agenda of militarism, pro-business measures against the working class and the evisceration of democratic rights. Hosoda stated, before Monday’s election: “The next prime minister will have to take over the Abe cabinet as well as his wishes.”

The party’s general council decided not to include rank-and-file LDP members in the election, though typically they would have a vote as well. The council stated that the process would take too long if normal procedures were followed, claiming this would have an adverse effect on the economy and management of the pandemic.

The decision not to hold a full leadership vote likely hurt challenger and former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba the most. He received 68 votes. Ishiba previously challenged Abe for the LDP presidency in 2012 and 2018, on an even more right-wing and militarist platform, and is reportedly more popular among regional party members. The other challenger, LDP Policy Research Council chairman Fumio Kishida, won 89 votes.

Suga could potentially call a snap election, in order to provide the installation of an unelected prime minister a veneer of public support, especially as Abe leaves office deeply unpopular. In August, shortly before announcing his resignation, the approval rating for Abe’s cabinet stood at 32.7 percent, according to a Jiji Press poll.

This hostility is driven by the growing economic and social crisis in Japan and internationally.

While the official unemployment rate stands at just 2.8 percent, it hides the real situation facing the working class. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.4 million workers have been furloughed and face being fired outright as companies seek to cut costs. In addition, 38 percent of all workers are in low-paid, non-regular jobs, and are at risk of being fired as well. Those who have given up searching for work are similarly not counted in the unemployment figures.

The ruling class therefore sees Suga as the most capable of pushing through the demands of big business over the objections of the working class. This will signify a continuation of monetary easing policies to boost the fortunes of the financial elite, while rolling back even the limited public spending carried out under Abe. When Suga indicated his intention to run for party head on August 31, the Nikkei Stock Average jumped 450 points.

Suga’s election also indicates that Tokyo will continue to pursue a close alliance with the United States. On Saturday, he called the Japan-US alliance the “foundation” of Tokyo’s diplomacy with other nations in Asia. On September 1, Suga stated: “The Japan-US relationship is stronger than ever and it is needless to say that we should continue to advance the alliance even further.” He cited a phone call the previous day between Abe and Trump, where the former sought to reassure the US president on this point.

Tokyo will continue to align with the US in war preparations aimed at China. Mirroring Washington’s push to “decouple” the US from the Chinese economy, Suga supported similar measures for Japan in April. As part of its COVID-19 bailout package that month, Tokyo provided 240 billion yen (US$2.3 billion) for companies to shift operations out of China and to Japan or Southeast Asia.

Like Abe, Suga belongs to Nippon Kaigi, an ultra-rightwing organization that promotes remilitarization, the restriction of basic democratic rights, and historical revisionism, to cover up the crimes of Japanese imperialism. Abe delivered a speech to the organization in May 2017, declaring his intention to revise Article 9 of the constitution, known as the pacifist clause, by 2020. While that agenda has been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Suga and his new government will attempt to follow through on Abe’s pledge.

Article 9 explicitly bars the country from fielding a military force or waging war on other nations. Through various “reinterpretations” since the constitution went into effect in 1947, the Japanese ruling class has worked around this clause to build up the military, formally known as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF). Abe’s cabinet declared a reinterpretation in July 2014 to allow “collective self-defense,” a euphemism for waging war overseas alongside an ally, namely the US.

In a September 8 debate, Suga called for constitutional revisions on four points the LDP proposed in March 2018. This included adding a clause to Article 9, which would explicitly recognize the SDF, as well as granting the government emergency powers that would restrict democratic rights. Suga is pushing for debate in the National Diet, where any constitutional changes would need a two-thirds majority of both houses before heading to a national referendum.

As for China, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin formally congratulated Suga, saying: “China stands ready to work with Japan’s new leader to continue to abide by the principles and spirit set in the four political documents between the two countries, deepen cooperation in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic as well as economic and social development, and promote the continuous improvement and development of China-Japan relations.” The four documents referenced are diplomatic agreements between Beijing and Tokyo, adopted between 1972 and 2008.

In reality, the US offensive in the region is heightening the tensions between the Japanese and Chinese ruling elites.

An editorial on Monday, in China’s state-owned Global Times , called for Beijing to boost China’s economic attractiveness for Japan. This, it stated, was necessary to prevent the US from pulling Tokyo even closer into the aggressive anti-China campaign now being whipped up in Washington.

The editorial warned: “The US is trying its best to get its allies to gang up against China. This will also have an impact on Japan. For example, Japan values the Chinese market, but it is also interacting with the US, Australia and India to promote the de-Sinisization of the supply chain.” It stated: “While China and Japan are seeking generally stable ties, and maintaining the status quo, there is also a possibility that the two countries’ differences will slowly widen.”

Despite these rising concerns in Beijing, Abe’s militarist agenda will continue under Suga, since the Japanese ruling class lacks any progressive means of ending the growing economic and social crisis it confronts.

Reactionary Massachusetts ruling paves way for Andover public schools to open in-person

Mike Ingram

Public schools in Andover, Massachusetts, a city of 33,000 north of Boston, open today, September 16, for both in-person and remote learning. The reopening follows a reactionary ruling September 8 by the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations Commonwealth Employment Relations Board (CERB) against teachers who refused to enter school buildings on the first day of professional training and school preparations on August 31.

Many Andover teachers, concerned over the lack of safety against COVID-19 in schools, refused to enter the buildings, sitting outside them with laptops doing their required professional learning and assessment work and attending staff meetings while social distancing. School officials argued that by refusing to enter classrooms teachers were unable to carry out tasks such as tagging furniture and testing WIFI connections.

The Andover Education Association (AEA), which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), described it as a “workplace safety action” due to the school district’s “lack of good-faith bargaining” over how to keep students and staff safe when school reopens.

A spokeswoman for Andover Public Schools (APS) denounced the action as an “illegal work stoppage.” District officials on the Andover School Committee met later the same day and voted to authorize their counsel to file an “instant strike petition” with the state Department of Labor Relations.

A petition for a strike investigation was filed September 1, alleging that a strike had occurred and is about to occur “and that this strike has been induced, encouraged and condoned by the Andover Education Association (AEU or Union).” It named six AEA officers, including AEA President Matthew Bach and Second Vice-President Julian DiGloria, both individually and in their capacity as union officials.

The petition was requested under Section 9A of the Massachusetts General Law (M. L. G c 150E), which states: “(a) No public employee or employee organization shall engage in a strike, and no public employee or employee organization shall induce, encourage or condone any strike, work stoppage, slowdown or withholding of services by such public employees.”

In its September 8 ruling, the employment relations board declared: “In support of this Strike Petition, the School Committee argues that it is not up to the Union or teachers to decide when, where or how to perform their duties and that the Union’s condonation and participation in a so-called work action in which they refused to enter school buildings despite clear instructions to do so constitutes a strike within the meaning of Section 1 and Section 9A of the Law. We agree.”

CERB further ruled that “although certain federal and state regulations may grant employees the right to refuse work in situations where they harbor a good faith reasonable belief that performing their duties could result in imminent serious injury or death, the Union has not defended its conduct here on such grounds, nor has it presented evidence that such circumstances exist at any of the APS schools on August 31, 2020. We therefore need not and do not reach this issue.” [emphasis added].

The ruling ordered that the AEA, and union officials Bach and DiGloria personally “immediately cease and desist from engaging any strike, work stoppage or other withholding of services” and “desist from encouraging or condoning or inducing work stoppage, slowdown, or other withholding of services.” The AEA immediately complied with these demands.

In contrast to its own findings, a footnote to this section of the CERB ruling cites the Labor Management Relations Act, which states: “nor shall the quitting of labor by an employee or employees in good faith because of abnormally dangerous conditions of work at the place of employment of such employee or employees be deemed a strike under this act.”

It also cites Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Regulation 29, which states: “However, occasions might arise when an employee is confronted with a choice between not performing assigned tasks from a hazardous condition at the workplace. If the employee, with no reasonable alternative, refuses in good faith to expose himself to the dangerous condition, he would be protected against subsequent discrimination.”

It is clear that teachers’ return to school buildings poses “imminent serious injury or death,” “abnormally dangerous” and “hazardous” conditions. Nevertheless, the employment relations board, claiming there was no real danger to teachers (although it has no scientific grounds to prove that) backed the school district’s claim that workers were involved in an illegal strike.

This situation has revealed a great deal about the situation teachers and other school employees confront as they seek to fight the spread of the pandemic and defend their lives and the lives of their students and their communities.

The labor laws both for public employees and private sector workers are thoroughly stacked up against the working class, giving management unilateral power to “direct their workforce” and impose a virtual dictatorship in the workplace. The unions agree to this reactionary setup in exchange for gaining legal sanction from the state and the ability to collect union dues from workers. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), the parent organization of the AEA, have spent decades suppressing strikes in exchange for the institutional and financial benefits that the union bureaucracy derives from this employment relations structure.

At the same time, if workers assert their right to refuse to work under unsafe conditions, they will not find any serious protection from OSHA, which has done nothing for workers during the pandemic. Meatpackers, health care, autoworkers and other workers who have reported outbreaks and dangerous conditions have been subjected to arbitrary victimization and even termination. The more than 8,000 COVID-related complaints filed by workers with OSHA, have resulted in less than 10 citations. This includes the first two citations against the meatpacking industry last week after six months during which time 18,000 workers were infected and more than 200 killed by the virus.

Educators have every right to organize and take collective action to defend their lives. But this means creating new forms of organization, which do not bow before “management’s rights,” i.e., the dictatorial powers of management to control the workplace. In Florida, Texas, Detroit and New York City, educators have established rank-and-file safety committees to assert the interests and rights of workers to monitor safety conditions, oppose efforts to conceal the spread of infections, and, if necessary, carry out strikes.

Across the country, authorities of both the Democratic and Republican parties have promoted the homicidal reopening of schools even as cases and deaths have risen. Towns where public schools and university campuses have reopened have become the new epicenters of the coronavirus, with college towns being most affected. At least six teachers have died since schools reopened last month and over half a million children have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began.

In an effort to back up its ruling against the teachers, CERB also argued:

“The Massachusetts Department of Public Health COVID-19 Dashboard for the week ending August 26, 2020 reflected that within the past 14 days, Andover was rated ‘Green,’” which meant it had an average daily case rate of less than four cases per 100,000 residents.” What it doesn’t mention is that the city of Lawrence, which is less than five miles from Andover, is a COVID-19 hotspot, with 20.5 cases per 100,000 residents and 299 positive tests for the previous 14 days, according to a September 9 report.

Teachers and other school workers do not live exclusively in Andover, a more affluent town, and travel from nearby Lawrence and other working-class communities with higher case rates. The virus does not recognize borders.

The day after the ruling, Republican Governor Charlie Baker welcomed the decision. “I think Andover made the right decision by arguing that a deal’s a deal, that there was an agreement that those 10 days would be spent conducting the training that was necessary,” Baker told a news conference.

“I think the DESE [Department of Elementary and Secondary Education position], which is basically that it’s okay to teach and to be in a basically empty building, is an appropriate decision. And I think all the data we have, and all the advice we’ve gotten from our colleagues in the public health in the infectious disease and the pediatric community—is that that’s okay,” Baker said.

The unions’ acquiescence to the ruling forcing teachers back into school buildings constitutes an agreement that teachers have no right to defend their health and safety conditions.

Andover educators are particularly apprehensive about the state of HVAC systems in the school. APS posted information to the Return to School webpage showing that the Town of Andover employed HVAC experts whose analysis showed that the schools meet guidance released by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Upon the AEA’s request, the district has contracted an outside HVAC contractor to conduct an independent inspection of the ventilation systems in each school building. That work was due to finish September 4, but no report has yet been published.

In Sharon, Massachusetts, a district contractor examined the HVAC systems in each Sharon school and found that none of them met minimum standards, according to the Sharon Teachers Association. “The nurses office, in particular, recirculates air to the administrative offices,” the union said in a statement.

Sharon teachers refused to enter school buildings for three days, but on September 11 the union reached a settlement with the School Committee, after they too filed their own petition for a strike investigation by the state labor relations board. The chair of the Sharon School Committee, Judy Crosby, attributed the agreement to the ruling against Andover teachers. “I do believe that the Andover decision that was released very late on Tuesday night was pretty essential in bringing all parties into the room to reach a settlement,” she told the ABC affiliate WCVB.

With widespread opposition to school reopening’s across the country, the aim of the Andover ruling is to intimidate teachers. The response of the unions shows that if the reopening is to be stopped and the lives of educators, students and their families be protected, it will require independent action by the working class. This is the purpose of the call by the Socialist Equality Party for the formation of rank-and-file safety committees and we urge teachers in Massachusetts to contact the WSWS Educators Newsletter for assistance in establishing these committees across all school districts.

San Diego State University seeks to shift blame to students for coronavirus outbreaks following reopening

Melody Isley & Norissa Santa Cruz

The number of COVID-19 cases in California is approaching 770,000, with a death toll nearing 15,000. Despite these staggering figures, the state’s major universities, including the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems, have moved forward with “hybrid models” of school reopening. The plans include a combination of in-person and online courses, placing three-quarters of a million students at risk of contracting the virus, along with hundreds of thousands of staff.

Since opening, hundreds of cases among college students have been reported every day, and many campuses have become outbreak hotspots. In Southern California, San Diego State University (SDSU) continues to make national headlines, with an explosion of cases that has created a community health disaster.

SDSU is the leader among California schools, with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, which increased by more than 200 cases since last week. As of Tuesday, over 648 COVID-positive students have been reported at the university, 73 percent of whom are undergraduates.

Responding to the negative press on skyrocketing cases, the CSU Chancellor’s office issued an announcement on Monday that the majority of classes will continue online for the spring 2021 semester. The administration continues to hail preparations made for the current fall semester as a success.

Unsurprisingly, campus life continues as “normal.” Brian, a freshman SDSU resident living in the dorms, told the WSWS that there is a lack of information, testing and personal protective equipment (PPE). “It feels like they're keeping us in the dark,” he said. “The school has been giving out information on testing, and yet it is still not mandatory for students to get tested. Also, there are no places on campus to obtain proper PPE and cleaning gear.”

For weeks, many students avoided voluntary testing for fear of social stigma, repercussions from the school, and the horrific conditions of the isolation dorms that have been leaked on social media in a now viral tweet.

Attempting to respond to demands of mass testing, the university announced on Tuesday an end to their stay-at-home advisory and boasted a new nominally required testing plan. Reportedly, students living on campus will be told at random to report for testing, and receive a $5 Starbucks gift card as an incentive. This public relations stunt will do little to nothing to stop the spread of the virus.

SDSU Vice President J. Luke Wood told reporters Tuesday that the administration has received 420 reports of student violations, such as not wearing masks, or participating in social gatherings. He added that “we will be moving forward with sanctions” for people or groups found breaking rules. Wood reported that some suspensions had already been made and ominously declared that students will face “consequences” if they don’t submit to testing. How such testing will be made mandatory is yet to be stated.

Anonymous student reports on social media reveal horrific conditions for students who contract the virus on campus. According to social media reports, students who tested positive for COVID-19 soon find staff at their dorms, dressed in hazmat-style suits. The staff tell students they have minutes to pack essential belongings before being taken to isolation dorms without notice.

Brian confirmed these accounts, stating that he has watched on numerous occasions “ambulance vans parked on the street” outside his building and unidentifiable school officials in hazmat gear periodically picking up students. Brian stated, “Most of my floor tested positive and got picked up at one point.” As their two weeks in isolation ends, some of the students are trickling back into their regular dormitory rooms.

While in isolation, students are housed in individual rooms in shared quarters with others who are infected. The students report receiving an “isolation kit” of cleaning supplies upon request and obtain food services via delivery. Food service is not provided every day for every meal. The university says it provides a bulk delivery on Fridays that is meant to keep the student fed for the whole weekend.

Students are not provided any additional supplies. Whatever they packed with them in the rush from their rooms to quarantine is what they will have for the remainder of the isolation period. On their own dime and at their own risk, students can order medical supplies to be delivered, or order food to be delivered via services like Postmates to the communal “drop off area.” Students report feeling highly anxious during isolation, alone and unsupported with an infectious respiratory illness, and made to feel their infections are their own fault.

Students thought to have been exposed to the virus are advised to quarantine, but without free and readily available supplies or support they largely carry on with their normal routines.

Additionally, the understaffed and under-supported student front desk staff and resident associates, who are students themselves, are charged with tasks such as sanitizing communal spaces and enforcing safety procedures. These student-workers are the primary resource for quarantining students and are on the frontlines of their university’s outbreak.

SDSU has placed the responsibility for the management of the outbreak largely in the hands of their lowest-paid staff (student workers, dining hall and maintenance workers, and cleaning staff), and in the hands of students themselves, often citing students’ “personal responsibility” as the cause, and the only solution, to the outbreak.

This is aimed at deflecting blame from the university itself for reopening, and behind the university administration and the Democratic Party establishment that runs California.

There are a lot of financial interests at stake. A sophomore who wished to remain anonymous reported to the WSWS that “I am very certain that SDSU opened the dorms because their finances… SDSU gets plenty of money from students living on campus.”

The events at SDSU are largely identical to the reopenings happening on campuses across the United States.

States run by Democrats and Republicans alike have followed in lock step with Trump’s reopening drive, placing thousands of lives in danger by recklessly allowing students to begin athletic and team sport training, join in-person classes, and open dormitories. These actions risk the lives not only of students, but of thousands of university workers, including housekeeping, cafeteria, and groundskeeping staff, the lowest paid workers on the campuses.

The blame for these policies does not begin and end with the university administrators and even state bodies. The return-to-school campaign is part of a broader effort to force all workers back to work in unsafe conditions. University administrations, under Democratic and Republican state governments, have adopted the same negligent policies due to the demands of the financial elites and Wall Street.

The fight against the unsafe opening of schools is part of the broader opposition of workers everywhere to the entire agenda of the ruling class. Struggles have broken out across K-12 and university campuses, including a strike by four thousand service workers at the University of Illinois, 800 nurses at a UI hospital in Chicago and some 2,000 grad student instructors at the University of Michigan. The pandemic is not an isolated event, but is one of many devastating crises caused by the capitalist system.

France imposes return to school without protections against COVID-19

Jacques Valentin

In order to return the economy to normal despite the pandemic, the French government is abandoning whatever safety measures were previously taken for the restart of classes. This is proceeding despite the recent surge in cases of COVID-19, with over 10,000 cases discovered on September 12 in France alone.

What this policy signifies can clearly be seen in Spain where the resurgence of COVID-19 is also well underway. The right-wing Madrid regional prime minister, Isabel Ayuso, declared: “It is probable that practically all children, in one way or another, will be infected by the coronavirus.” That is what is in store for children and their families across Europe if the working class does not oppose the forced reopening of schools.

In the case of France’s September restart of the school year, distance learning has been abandoned: all pupils must be present in overcrowded classrooms. And while teachers moved between classrooms during the partial school reopening in June, now pupils will have to move between classes through overcrowded corridors. This “intermingling,” to which the minister was previously opposed, is now accepted.

As for school buses, recreation periods and meals, “intermingling” is also the rule. Everything is returning to pre-lockdown conditions, with minor adjustments. An epidemic explosion in schools is in the making, with masks being the only protective barrier, and only then for middle and high school pupils. In any case, masks are not very effective in environments where social distancing is lacking.

To force parents back to work at all costs, no plans are made to look after pupils whose classes are forced to close due to cases of COVID-19. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer bluntly told BFM-TV on September 7: “We are planning for parental leave in the event of school closures.” Parental leave is time off work without pay and therefore an enormous cost to workers’ families.

Nevertheless, infections are rising rapidly. The government announced last Thursday it would reactivate payments for partially laid-off workers in the private sector, authorized absences of public sector workers, and absences for one parent only if schools or classes are shut down. The obvious aim is to avoid a social explosion.

The criteria for closures of classes and schools are vague. The decision is in the hands of local government officials in consultation with regional health authorities. The ministry refuses to communicate the list of classes and schools closed and only provides limited vague data on classes and establishments concerned.

Information is being concealed, as during the first COVID-19 wave at the beginning of the year, when it proved impossible to find out about the situation in the retirement homes. For local information, one must consult the regional press. The militant “Red Pen” teachers group also offers an online unofficial map application identifying closures at the national level.

On September 7, Blanquer announced 28 teaching establishments and 262 classes had been closed since the school reopening due to COVID-19.

The “Red Pens” have located more than 1,200 establishments affected by COVID-19 as of last Sunday. This confirms the explosive growth of infections. The Education Ministry is mainly only closing classes and not schools, despite the “intermingling” risk described above, increasing the risks of contagion.

Another increasingly difficult problem is distinguishing COVID-19 from other pathologies. While only a few children have started to catch colds as it is still before the end of summer, family doctors are already overwhelmed with calls after children were denied access to school because they had symptoms of unidentified illnesses that might be COVID-19.

Parents are being advised to keep children at home if their temperature exceeds 38°C. On the other hand, guidelines for teachers and school principals refer to various “clinical signs” that could indicate COVID-19. Educational establishments are denying access to more and more children, above all in primary schools and kindergartens.

All this is panicking parents, who do not know when they should test the child for COVID-19. That is considerably increasing the number of days off work for sick children. Days off are limited, however, and parents must bear the costs, unless the work contract specifies employer responsibility.

Given that COVID-19 is in any case contagious before symptoms appear and that children’s cases are more often asymptomatic than adults, these measures will not contain the epidemic. The confusion between COVID-19 and common colds and flus will grow as the number of cases increase with the start of seasonal winter illnesses.

Before the school year restarted, Prime Minister Jean Castex could think of nothing better to propose than to “avoid allowing grand-dad and grandma go pick up the kids from school.”

The current television campaign in favor of maintaining social distancing to protect senior citizens perfectly illustrates this attitude. It gives the impression that French retirees live unhurried lives in spacious apartments or opulent villas, allowing them to carefully organize contacts with their children and grandchildren. This represents in a concentrated form the condescending contempt with which the bourgeoisie considers the situation of the working class.

Working class districts have already paid a heavy price in the pandemic. Low-paid workers have played an essential role in guaranteeing continued functioning of the economy during the lockdown, often without protective equipment. They have suffered large numbers of infections compared to the rest of the population. One study (in French) shows that mortality rates were twice as high in poor districts than in others. Bad living conditions and conditions at the workplace are the probable reasons for explaining this difference.

In poorer working class districts housing is cramped and several generations of the same family are often grouped together in one apartment. This is often the case of immigrant workers who have more problems accessing housing. Even if the elderly avoid picking up children from school, contamination will spread rapidly in these working class areas, this time via their children, as the epidemic invades the education system.

While the epidemic is resurging, the government is making miserly savings on the backs of workers. It decided by decree, applicable starting September 1, to drastically reduce the number of categories of vulnerable people able to benefit from partial time off at work due to chronic pathologies. Authorizations for absences of close relatives of vulnerable people were also scrapped.

The decree was promulgated without taking into account the opinions of patient associations, which are outraged.

The situation is particularly a problem for teachers and school staff in contact with children. Those whose health is fragile will be obliged to use overcrowded public transport if they live in a big city or suburbs and will be exposed to potentially infected children. The situation is even more dangerous in primary schools, where pupils do not wear masks and where physical contact is greater.

Schools at epicentre of UK’s coronavirus explosion

Robert Stevens

COVID-19 is spreading out of control in Britain, with levels of infection not seen since May being recorded. Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday all saw above 3,300 cases daily. A further 2,621 cases and nine deaths were recorded on Monday, a normal “weekend-dip” in reports—followed by 3,105 cases and 27 deaths on Tuesday.

The virus is resurgent in workplaces, schools, and communities, with the R (reproduction) value rising last Friday to between 1.0 and 1.2. In London and the North West of England, R is between 1.1 and 1.3, higher than the UK’s other regions.

According to official figures, an average of 2,998 daily infections are being recorded daily—an amount that has nearly doubled in two weeks from the seven-day rolling average of 1,323 on August 31. The real numbers infected is far larger as many thousands of people are unable to get a test after showing symptoms.

Official deaths in Britain stand at 41,637. But this is sharply contradicted by Office for National Statistics figures published yesterday, showing that 57,528 fatalities with COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate were registered in the UK up to September 4-6. Other authoritative assessments of the COVID-19 death toll, based on excess deaths, are over 65,000.

Such is the spread of coronavirus that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, which adopted a strategy of herd immunity at the beginning of the pandemic, has been forced to impose new national restrictions. Its policy of “local lockdowns” were so porous they only contributed to the spread of the infection over wide areas of the country.

On Monday, social gatherings of more than six people were made illegal, as the “rule of six” came into force. This too will do little or nothing to stop the spread of the virus. The rule is not even being applied uniformly across the UK. In England, it applies indoors and outdoors and includes children; in Scotland indoors and outdoors and excludes children; in Wales indoors only and excludes children; and in Northern Ireland indoors only and includes children.

Tens of millions of workers, including all educators and pupils, will remain exposed to the virus, with the government stating that “education and work settings are unaffected” by the “rule of six.” True to their naked class bias, the Tories had to delay their announcement by several days while mulling over what to do with grouse shooting during the season. They determined that six people cannot mingle at a birthday or Christmas party and that two families of four stopping for a talk in the street would be illegal “mingling.” But parties of up to 30 people can don their flat caps, Barbour jackets, tweeds and wellies, and spend a costly day on the moors with their wealthy chums.

Under conditions where there is no mass testing in the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared in announcing the measures, “Workplaces could be opened up to all those who test negative that morning and allow them to behave in a way that was normal before COVID… Theatres and sports venues could test all audience members on the day and let in those with a negative result, all those who are not infectious.”

With the entire economy opened and the virus spreading like wildfire, he signed off with “Wash your hands, cover your face, and make space.”

The reopening of schools—nearly a month ago in Scotland and from September in the rest of the UK—with over 10 million pupils and 2 million school staff returning—is a central factor in the explosion of COVID-19 cases. This will be made much worse next week with 2 million students travelling all over the UK to university towns and cities to resume their courses.

Already, nearly 1,000 schools have been hit with infections and the number is shooting up exponentially.

The government is providing no national breakdown of infections in schools. The ToryFibs twitter group is providing a daily tally on school infections based on reports from school websites, news reports and National Health Service updates. By 5pm Monday evening it reported infections at 792 schools and just three hours later this had increased to 850 schools. By Tuesday morning it rose to 877 schools, and by Tuesday evening reached 913.

Among those in an infected household is Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, whose two children have been at school throughout the pandemic. Starmer went into self-isolation on Monday as a “family member” showed symptoms of coronavirus. The SKWAWKBOX website reported that “Labour insiders” said that Starmer “is self-isolating because one of his children is showing coronavirus symptoms.”

Starmer played a central role in enforcing the unsafe reopening of schools, declaring last month in Parliament to Johnson, “I don’t just want all children back at school next month, I expect them back at school. No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.”

Starmer was insisting on a return to school as the government was lying about the spread of coronavirus in schools that were open. Amid a barrage of propaganda, Public Health England, in an August 23 statement, claimed “out of more than 1 million children attending pre-school and primary school in June, just 70 children were affected,” boasting that this represented a rate of 0.01 percent.

With up to a half of all COVID-19 deaths in the UK and over half in Scotland taking place in care homes, there are major concerns that the resurgence will take thousands of more lives among the elderly.

Last Friday, Stuart Miller, the director of adult social care delivery at the Department of Health and Social Care, wrote to all care providers, local authority chief executives and directors of adult social care, warning that there are the “first signs” of rising infections being “reflected in care homes” across Britain. The Sunday Times revealed that there have been outbreaks in at least 43 homes. This is likely a significant underestimation. In the week to last Friday, coronavirus outbreaks were confirmed at 12 care homes just in the city of Salford, with three residents dying.

Outbreaks in food processing factories continue. At the Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire puddings and desserts factory in Hull, a worker is “seriously ill” after being infected and another has been sent home. Aunt Bessie’s admitted last week to a “small number” of infections among its 400 employees and has kept production running. However, on Monday a factory on the same Freightliner Road, Chaucer Foods, was forced to “temporarily suspend production” to test all staff.

Pubs are another major vector of the disease, with people supposedly under a local “lockdown” able to freely congregate for weeks at nearly 50,000 pubs nationally. The largest pub chain, Wetherspoons, admitted Monday that 66 staff have already tested positive for COVID-19 in 50 pubs since reopening.

The resurgence is brutally exposing government lies that it is operating a “state of the art” Test and Trace system. The Sunday Times reported leaked documents showing a backlog of 185,000 tests, with swabs being destroyed and the government requesting that labs in Germany and Italy carry out the necessary processing.

On Monday, it was revealed that for millions of people in England’s 10 outbreak hotspots, no walk-in, drive-in or postal coronavirus tests were available with the government testing web site reporting a message: “This service is currently very busy. More tests should be available later.” One of the hotpots is Bolton in the north west of England, with an infection rate of 122 cases for every 100,000 people. This is an infection rate almost 10 times higher than the rate that puts a country on the UK’s quarantine list.

The Moria catastrophe and the European Union’s war on refugees

Martin Kreickenbaum

On the Greek island of Lesbos, a human tragedy is playing out before the eyes of the world. The 13,000 refugees who have been left homeless and stranded on the island since the Moria camp burned down are being denied all assistance. They sleep in the open air on roads and have no access to drinking water or food. If they protest against this barbaric treatment, the police attack them with tear gas.

“The EU always talks about human rights, but they are treating us like rubbish,” Taheri, a youth who fled Afghanistan with his family, told Germany’s Der Spiegel.

The inhumane treatment and humiliation of these despairing people cannot simply be explained as the result of indifference to their fate. It is a product of a deliberate policy pursued by the European Union (EU) and its member states. Refugees are being intentionally mistreated to deter others from attempting to reach Europe. For this same reason, the EU allows thousands of migrants to drown in the Mediterranean each year.

The horrifying pictures from Lesbos expose the brutality of “Fortress Europe.” The worthlessness of the “European values” often invoked by Berlin, Paris, and Brussels to attack Russia and China, or wage war in defence of “human rights,” has been laid bare for all to see. The demands raised by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Lega and other fascistic organisations are being implemented by the EU.

Europe’s ruling circles will use the same ruthlessness they are currently displaying towards refugees to suppress anyone who challenges their wealth and power. Under conditions of the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s, they are preparing for bitter class battles. The defence of the refugees is therefore not merely an elementary humanitarian obligation. It is necessary to defend the democratic rights and social achievements of the entire working class.

Leading European politicians have openly admitted that they welcome the deterrent provided by the images from Lesbos. “We must now try to avoid sending out signals that could cause a chain reaction we could not control,” stated Austria’s foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, by way of justifying his government’s refusal to accept any refugees from Lesbos.

The German government argued along similar lines. Berlin has warned about a “pull effect,” insisted that a new camp must be built on Lesbos and concealed its inaction behind demands for a “European solution.” But they know full well that this will never come to pass, since the Hungarian, Polish and other far-right European governments firmly reject accepting any refugees.

The German government’s offer to accept between 100 and 150 children and an additional 1,500 refugees, most of whom are families, is a sham. Its aim is above all to contain the widespread outrage over what is happening on Lesbos. The government already promised to accept the children earlier this year. The same applies to families with children, whom the government are now allegedly “seeking.”

German responsibility

The reality is that the German government and its European partners bear chief responsibility for the misery and mass deaths on Europe’s external borders. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is supporting his party colleague, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is doing all he can to make life a living hell for the refugees.

Mitsotakis has accused the refugees of setting fire to the camp themselves in order to be able to leave Lesbos. A Greek government spokesman declared, “They thought if they just set fire to Moria, they would be able to leave the island. We tell them bluntly: they can forget it.”

Even prior to the fire in Moria, life for the refugees was “hell on earth.” Jean Ziegler, the Swiss former UN special rapporteur for the right to food, described the conditions in February 2020 as follows: “Everything I have seen in the slums around the world pales in comparison to what I experienced in Moria. Human rights are being violated in the camp at every turn, total despair is all-pervasive. The malefactors in Brussels are allowing conditions of survival to develop in the hot spots that recall the deplorable concentration camps and hope in this way to drain the flood of refugees.”

The refugees are now literally left with nothing. They are forced to camp in the dirt without tents or blankets. The police fire tear gas at them. They are refusing to allow aid organisations to access the homeless refugees, who are desperately searching for food, and force volunteers to dispose of meals that have already been prepared for them.

This apocalyptic situation is impacting the refugees ever more severely. The aid organisation Mission Lifeline reported on Twitter of “children with severe injuries and helpless parents.” The Greek police fired “fist-sized metal objects full of tear gas at children.”

The Greek government has now begun constructing a new camp for the refugees at Kara Tepe, a former military training ground on Lesbos. However, only about 500 refugees have been accommodated there thus far. Many are terrified that they will experience the same inhumane treatment there as in Moria, and that they will be forced to spend the coming cold and wet winter in tents.

Surrounded by NATO barbed wire, the camp resembles a prison and conditions within are similar: curfews, inadequate medical services and the isolation of people who test positive for COVID-19. Even so, the threat of an uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus remains in Kara Tepe, just like in Moria. Seven of the first 300 refugees accepted into the camp have tested positive for COVID-19.

A product of the dirty deal with Turkey

The concept for the Moria camp was developed in Germany, and it was established and operated with the help of the EU. It is the direct product of the dirty deal negotiated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel with Turkey in 2016.

At the time, the EU obligated the Greek Syriza government to establish camps on Aegean Sea islands that were euphemistically referred to as “hot spots.” Their role was to capture, register and deport as soon as possible refugees who successfully made the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece. At the same time, the coastguard was significantly strengthened and NATO warships were sent to the eastern Mediterranean to deter refugees.

The agreement with Turkey intentionally violated the right of each person to have an individual review of their reasons for seeking asylum so as to facilitate the mass deportation of refugees. The German government and EU sent several liaison officials and employees of the EU border agency Frontex to Greece in order to swiftly process the asylum applications. Many of the rejections were so obviously unlawful that Greek judges subsequently overturned them.

At the same time, the EU refused to accept the same number of refugees from Turkey as had been deported, which was one of the conditions of the agreement. The agreement was thus reduced to the miserable core of Turkey blocking all refugees from reaching Greece and Greece refusing to allow any refugees to travel to other European countries.

The hot spots on the Aegean islands, which had originally only been intended for refugees to stay in for a week, were transformed into permanent internment camps in which living conditions became ever more life-threatening and inhumane. The number of internees grew. Already in 2018, the containers in Moria were no longer adequate to house everyone. In a neighbouring olive grove, wooden huts and tents were erected for the refugees. At that time, 6,000 refugees were living in a legal vacuum from which there was no escape.

The situation then worsened dramatically in Moria in late 2019. Around 30,000 refugees successfully reached Greece in dinghies during the autumn, and they were subsequently confined to the camps. By March 2020, around 20,000 people lived in and around Moria. Food and water became scarce and were rationed. Internees had to queue for hours to get a meal or go to the toilet. The power supply regularly collapsed, and the coronavirus pandemic was already threatening to erupt.

All experts clearly understood that the virus would spread among the camp internees uncontrolled once it emerged. But the Greek government did not respond by evacuating the camp. Instead, it reduced the number of active aid organisations and imposed strict curfews.

COVID-19 was then detected in one refugee in early September. The virus spread rapidly throughout the overcrowded camp. Shortly thereafter, 35 infections had been registered. The total curfew that was then imposed and the reduction of medical care to emergency ambulance services triggered unrest. Ultimately, a fire destroyed the entire camp.

EU toughens refugee policy

The German government and EU have responded to the self-made catastrophe in Moria by adopting an even harder line on refugee policy.

At a joint press conference on Friday, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and EU Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas presented the key points of the EU’s new refugee policy. According to them, refugee camps on Europe’s external borders should be funded and operated by the EU itself.

“Moria no longer exists,” said Schinas. “That’s why it is clear that the Greek authorities must quickly establish a new institution that is modern, that is a centre with all of the necessary facilities to identify and process asylum cases.”

This will see the accelerated implementation of plans presented by Seehofer to the EU last summer. They include extra-territorial internment camps on the external borders where legal proceedings and the Geneva Conventions for Refugees will be effectively suspended.

Instead of evacuating them, Seehofer is threatening the refugees with a Moria 2.0! The spiral of deterrence set into motion by the EU in its struggle against refugees is being pushed to a new stage. It can already be expected that in a relatively short period, the conditions in the newly established EU camps will be even worse than those in Moria.

The “common European solution” being sought by Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Rome is focused on intensifying the war on refugees and driving them out of Europe. There is no room for the millions of people fleeing war, hunger and poverty out of pure desperation.

Trump stages sham Mideast “peace” ceremony on White House lawn

Bill Van Auken

The signing of agreements between Israel and the Sunni Persian Gulf monarchies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on the White House South Lawn Tuesday was proclaimed by US President Donald Trump as the advent of “peace in the Middle East without blood all over the sand,” and universally hailed by the media as “historic.”

All of this inflated rhetoric is designed to conceal the reality that the sordid deals inked in Washington are only part of US efforts to solidify an anti-Iranian axis for a potentially world catastrophic war in the region.

The US-Israeli-Emirati-Bahraini signing ceremony was staged close to the anniversaries of two previous US-brokered “peace” deals: the September 17, 1978, Camp David accords signed by Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and the Oslo Accords signed on the White House lawn by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yassir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on September 13, 1993.

President Donald J. Trump, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bahrain Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the United Arab Emirates Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyanisigns sign the Abraham Accords Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)

The proximity of the anniversaries and Trump’s absurd preening and posturing Tuesday as the architect of the so-called “Abraham Accords” and a new era of peace in the Middle East recall nothing so much as Marx’s adage: the first time tragedy, the second time farce.

The 1978 deal initiated the process of “normalization” of relations between Israel and the Arab regimes, all of which assisted in the repression of the Palestinian movement and the annihilation of its leaders. With the 1993 accord, the PLO abandoned any pretense of a struggle for the liberation of Palestine, instead establishing the corrupt Palestinian Authority, whose principal purpose is policing the Palestinian population of the occupied territories in collaboration with Israel’s security forces.

The deals signed Tuesday—a treaty between Israel and the UAE and a “declaration” of intent between the Zionist state and Bahrain, which was dragged into the process at the last minute without any formal agreement negotiated—have nothing whatsoever to do with “peace.”

In the first place, there has never been a shot fired in anger between the Gulf sheikdoms and Israel. Rather, the deals formalize what were already existing and barely concealed commercial, governmental and military ties between the venal and dictatorial Sunni Arab monarchies and Tel Aviv.

Among the most ludicrous features of Tuesday’s ceremonies was the pretense that the Emirati and Bahraini foreign ministers—Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the UAE’s ruling royal family, and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, former head of Bahrain’s viciously repressive security forces—represent the aspirations and interests of the Arab masses.

When Sadat carried out his historic betrayal at Camp David, he did so as the head of state of the most populous country in the Middle East—now numbering over 100 million—and as the representative of a regime founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the icon of Arab nationalism, which had been at war with Israel virtually continuously for a quarter of a century.

Nahyan represents an Emirati royal family that rules over a territory in which barely 11 percent of the population are citizens, with nearly 90 percent comprised of foreign migrant workers, most of them poorly paid South Asians who are brutally exploited under the shadow of dictatorial visa rules allowing for their summary expulsion.

As for Zayani, he speaks for Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, which rules over a country in which 70 percent of the population consists of disenfranchised, poor and brutally repressed Shia Bahrainis, with opponents of the regime subjected to arbitrary detention, torture and death.

In carrying out their US-brokered deals with Israel, the Emirati and Bahraini monarchies dispensed with the threadbare fiction that the Arab bourgeois regimes are defenders of the rights of the Palestinians against Israeli occupation and apartheid rule. This fiction was codified in the so-called Arab Peace Initiative launched by Saudi Arabia in 2002, which made recognition of Israel dependent upon Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

While the Arab League had endorsed this initiative, when the Palestinians introduced a resolution condemning the UAE deal reached last month with Tel Aviv, the body voted it down.

If the House of Saud has not joined with its brother monarchs in the UAE and Bahrain in a “peace” pilgrimage to the Trump White House it is because of fear that such a naked renunciation of its own initiative and embrace of Israel could fatally undermine its claim to legitimacy, both internally and in the wider Muslin world. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Riyadh gave its blessing to Bahrain—which is heavily dependent upon Saudi support—for its deal with Israel, and that the Saudi regime is itself collaborating closely with Tel Aviv, despite the absence of formal relations.

Palestinians demonstrated in the West Bank and Gaza Tuesday in a “day of rage” against the sham “peace” deals in Washington. Shawan Jabarin, the general director of Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, said that the deals laid bare “what has been clear to Palestinians for decades: Israel’s illegal acts of annexation and apartheid will not deter those in power from the pursuit of their own interests, to the detriment, if not damnation, of justice, accountability and human rights in Palestine.”

For his part, Trump thuggishly bragged about cutting off US contributions to assistance programs for Palestinian refugees because “they didn’t say nice things about us,” and suggested that the deals with the UAE and Bahrain would escalate pressure upon the Palestinians to capitulate.

Netanyahu, like Trump, aimed to use the White House ceremony to boost his domestic image under conditions in which he faces trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust and is confronting growing domestic opposition amid soaring COVID-19 infection rates and an economic crisis that has left 21 percent of the workforce unemployed. He kept the language of the deal with the UAE secret until the signing, fearing that its verbiage about foreswearing annexation of swathes of the occupied West Bank and supporting a so-called “two-state solution,” would alienate his right-wing base.

Netanyahu has insisted that annexation remains “on the table.” When he and Trump were asked about the issue at a press appearance shortly before the signing ceremony, the US president replied, “We don’t want to talk about that now.”

The idea that the agreements signed on the White House lawn were a step toward peace in the Middle East is belied by the continuing war threats by the US-led anti-Iranian axis in the region.

Teheran warned Washington Tuesday against making a “strategic mistake” after Trump threatened Iran over unsubstantiated reports that it was preparing to exact revenge for the US drone assassination in January of Iranian general and senior leader Qassem Suleimani by assassinating the US ambassador to South Africa. South African authorities dismissed the reports as baseless.

Trump had threatened Monday that any Iranian attack would be met with retaliation “1,000 times greater in magnitude.”

The Iranian navy reported last week that it had driven off US warplanes that had attempted to approach an area where Iranian military exercises were being conducted in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Military tensions have continued to escalate since Trump abrogated the Iranian nuclear accord with the world’s major powers in 2018, imposing unilateral sanctions against the Iranian population that are tantamount to a state of war.

Aerial bombings in the US-backed and Saudi-led war in Yemen continue to claim lives, with nearly 200,000 killed in the past five years and some 10 million people brought to the brink of starvation. One of the byproducts of the “peace” deals is the anticipated sale to the UAE, one of the participants in the near-genocidal war against Yemen, of F-35 fighter jets and other advanced weaponry.

Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its own bombing raids against what it claims are Iranian-connected targets in Syria, while threatening to launch a new war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The chief impediment to peace in the Middle East is the protracted drive by US imperialism, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, to assert its hegemony over the oil-rich region. Washington’s escalating campaign for regime change in Iran is aimed at denying the country’s resources and strategic position to China in preparation for “great power” conflict—i.e., a third world war.

West Coast fires and evacuations expected to fuel the spread of COVID-19

Kevin Martinez

At least 87 fires are still burning in 11 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In Oregon, at least 22 people are missing because of the wildfires, which have claimed 10 people in the state, including a 13-year-old and his grandmother. Officials fear more deaths will be confirmed in the coming days and have established a mobile medical examiner facility, essentially a mobile morgue, in Linn County east of Corvallis. A child was killed also in Washington state.

In California, at least 24 people have died in the wildfires. The North Complex Fire alone has taken 15 lives, destroyed 723 structures and burned more than 260,000 acres across four counties. It is only 39 percent contained.

Seven victims of the North Complex Fire have been identified by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, ranging in age from 16 to 70.

Firefighter Cody Carter battles the North Complex Fire in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The August Complex Fire, which started last month, has burned more than 755,000 acres across Mendocino and Humboldt counties and is only 39 percent contained.

The Creek Fire in Fresno County has now burned more than 220,000 acres and is 16 percent contained. The Dolan Fire, south of Big Sur, is only 40 percent contained and has burned almost 120,000 acres.

Across Oregon and Washington, 28 large fires have burned over 1.5 million acres. The Beachie Creek Fire, east of Salem, reported no new growth from the previous day as officials are cautiously optimistic that expected precipitation can help firefighting efforts.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said that “virtually the entire state is covered by a cloud of smoke that’s unbelievably irritating, downright unhealthy and dangerous.” Many parts of the West Coast continue to have some of the worst air quality in the world, according to the air quality group IQAir. The fires are now so widespread that parts of the East Coast, including New York City and Washington, D.C., are now registering smoke from the infernos.

There are now nine major wildfires burning across Washington state, with the two largest, the Pearl Hill and Cold Springs fires, burning more than 412,500 acres, according to the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

As wildfires continue to spread throughout the Western United States, health officials are warning that COVID-19 will also infect evacuees at shelters and evacuations sites that are now dealing with two public health emergencies.

Because the physical ailments associated with smoke inhalation are so similar to the symptoms associated with the virus, there is a growing concern that hospitals may be inundated with people suffering from both. Even worse, those at risk of contracting COVID-19 at an emergency shelter may forgo evacuating at all.

Karl Kim, executive director of the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, which trains first responders, told U.S. News and World Report, “People are scrambling right now to figure out how this affects the guidance and messaging and so forth.” He also said that the shelters’ relationship to public health is an “unusually important and under-researched topic.”

As families and groups evacuate from one location to another, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell to what extent the group shelters are fueling the pandemic.

“Contact tracing is really critical during a pandemic, and just because there’s a wildfire, all of the needs associated with contact tracing don’t just go away,” Kim said. “I think it’s more complicated because of the urgent nature of the evacuation. We don’t have good systems for this; nonetheless, we need to do that tracking. That’s the ongoing public health challenge.”

Organizations like the American Red Cross are requiring evacuees to wear masks and stay six feet apart, but these rules are becoming increasingly difficult to enforce in disaster zones and crowded shelters.

The Oregon State Fairgrounds in the state capital Salem saw maskless groups of evacuees gather in the parking lot and barn over the weekend. Signs were posted outside the exposition center with health and safety guidelines regarding both the fires and the pandemic. Volunteers reminded everyone inside to wear masks.

Already some 6,300 people are in emergency Red Cross shelters and hotels but as many as 50,000 potential evacuees may join them before the fires are brought under control, according to Brad Kieserman, vice president of disaster operations and logistics for the American Red Cross.

Kieserman told the media that normally during an emergency shelter situation, community groups and charities gather evacuees into school gymnasiums and meeting halls and food is provided in buffet lines. The pandemic, however, has forced shelters to adopt new approaches that minimize the risk of disease transmission.

“Noncongregate shelters is a new pandemic thing,” Kieserman said, “The last thing we want to have happen is people to remain in the path of a wildfire or hurricane because they think it’s safer to do than risk a shelter.”

Red Cross teams are reported to be cleaning and disinfecting regularly as well as checking staffers and evacuees for any signs of sickness. Those who are infected are taken to special isolation centers, and if possible are sent to hotels instead of group shelters. Box lunches are being distributed in lieu of buffet lines.

Group shelters in Central California are reportedly using plastic pipes with clear shower curtains to separate people in evacuation centers while still allowing them to see outside from their isolated areas. According to the Red Cross, more than 1,200 people fleeing the Creek Fire are staying at 30 hotels, while the rest stay at group shelters.

In Oregon, officials have moved beyond hosting group shelters at the usual churches, schools, and community buildings to include malls, golf courses, and other businesses to accommodate those staying in their cars or recreational vehicles.