South Africa: COVID-19 cases soar with little prospect of widespread vaccination

Jean Shaoul

On Sunday, South Africa reported that its total number of COVID-19 infections had reached one million, just nine days after reporting 900,000 cases.

The death rate has nearly doubled, with the seven-day rolling average of daily deaths rising from 0.25 per 100,000 people to 0.48 per 100,000 people in two weeks. The virus has now killed more than 27,000 people in the continent’s most industrialised nation. This is nearly one quarter of all the deaths from the coronavirus in Africa.

The situation in South Africa is replicated in a second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping across much of the continent, which has seen a steady rise in infections since November.

Dr Zweli Mkhize, South Africa’s health minister told the South African Broadcasting Corporation, “This wave has come up quite unpredictably.” This is a flat out lie.

Most of the casualties occurred after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) government organised a return to work in a bid to stem the fall in corporate profits and the country’s pending insolvency, calling off one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, enforced with extreme police brutality. In the second quarter of the year, when restrictions were in force, output fell 16.4 percent, while unemployment has risen and is expected to reach 35 to 40 percent as companies cut back or close for good.

Cyril Ramaphosa [credit: Tasnim News Agency]

The country is now facing a new and more virulent form of Covid-19, referred to as 501.V2, which has become dominant in many parts of the country. Crucially and most alarmingly, the new infections are spreading among young people between 15 to 19 years, with the four provinces of the Eastern Cape, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, the most populous parts of the country, the hardest hit. The relatively low mortality rate in African countries thus far has been attributed in part to their predominantly youthful populations.

Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said that this second wave was likely to see far higher numbers than those recorded in the first, with cases doubling every 14.5 days. Infectious disease specialist Dr Richard Lessells warned, “As people return from holidays at coastal areas, we can expect them to bring the variant with them. We can also expect travelers to take the variant with them across the borders to other African countries.”

On Monday, the South African Medical Association warned that the healthcare system was on the verge of being overwhelmed by the increase in Covid-19 patients. Several hospitals and medical centres have reported wards overflowing with coronavirus patients as healthcare workers are forced to cancel their holidays to tackle the huge influx of patients.

Mediclinic International, one of the country’s top three private hospital networks, stressed the terrible impact the surge in cases was having on healthcare resources including staff, equipment and beds to provide intensive treatment for seriously ill patients. Its spokesperson said, “The numbers of patients seeking care within our hospitals has exceeded previous numbers during the first peak and the majority of our ICU and high-care units are operating at capacity [in the Western Cape province].

Ramaphosa, like his counterparts across the globe, has refused to do anything that would impact on the major corporations’ ability to make profits, instead announcing a series of measures aimed at curtailing freedom of movement and social behaviour. These include a ban on indoor and outdoor gatherings, a curfew between 9pm and 6am, the closure of non-essential establishments, including shops, restaurants, bars and all cultural venues at 8pm, a ban on the sale of alcohol and the closure of beaches and public swimming pools in those areas where the infection is most prevalent. These include the Eastern Cape renowned for its beautiful sandy beaches. Ramaphosa has made mask wearing in public compulsory and the failure to do so a criminal offence subject to a fine and/or imprisonment.

Ramaphosa blamed the population for the spread of the virus, saying “Reckless behavior due to alcohol intoxication has contributed to increased transmission. Alcohol-related accidents and violence are putting pressure on our hospital emergency units.”

Dr Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of Witwatersrand, has noted that while the more advanced countries such as the US, UK and the European Union cut deals with the major pharmaceutical corporations to secure the doses to vaccinate their populations even before they were tested and approved, South Africa does not as yet have access to vaccines.

Ramaphosa has said he expects 10 percent of the population to be inoculated in the first months of 2021 due to the country’s participation in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covid-19 Global Vaccine Access Facility (Covax), at a cost of $140 million. In reality, this is unlikely to start before the middle of the year and will only be available to the financial elite with ready cash or healthcare insurance packages. The government is also a member of the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team looking at other ways to finance the cost of procuring vaccines for the continent and is seeking supplemental supplies through private deals with the drug companies.

Dr Madhi stressed that it would be necessary to vaccinate as many people as possible to be able to head off what he feared would be “a third and a fourth wave” and that plans to vaccinate just 10 percent of the population would be insufficient.

The situation is made more obscene still because South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare is set to start manufacturing several million doses a day of the vaccine for Johnson & Johnson, which is conducting clinical trials in the country. But its output will be for export not the South African people. While the pharmaceutical giant has promised to sell its vaccines at break-even prices and provide half a billion doses to Covax to help poor countries, there is no guarantee that any of it will end up in South Africa.

As a “middle-income” country, South Africa, which suffers from grotesque levels of inequality and widespread poverty, is ineligible for low-cost vaccines from the international aid organisations. It has therefore to rely, like other poor and middle-income nations, on Covax, a complex vaccine sharing scheme devised by a consortium of international health organizations, including the World Health Organisation, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

While poor countries can get the vaccines for free, middle-income countries that cannot compete on the open market can buy into Covax and receive vaccines in deals that are opaque and come with strings attached. It involves paying up front without knowing which vaccine they will receive or when the doses will arrive. Covax estimates the price per dose, but the purchaser must bear the risk if the actual cost turns out to be higher, the vaccine fails or if anything goes wrong. Seth Berkley, Gavi’s chief executive, said that it could secure an initial two billion doses and then more later. However, he refused to explain their deals with drug companies, describing them as commercially confidential, even though they were being paid for with taxpayers’ money.

Angry health advocates have threatened to sue the South African government, which has presided over the deliberate looting of taxpayers’ money in a spate of corruption scandals, including in the state power utility Eskom and its suppliers—that have led to severe outages—and among employers that fraudulently claimed Covid-19 relief funds without paying them out to their workers.

Daily deaths near 1,000 as UK Parliament spends day ratifying Brexit treaty

Robert Stevens

Yesterday was a continuing nightmare for the British population, as another 981 deaths were announced from COVID-19. A further 50,023 new cases of the disease were recorded. These numbers will rise as Scotland and Wales are yet to detail deaths over the Christmas period.

But in a world far removed from this death and suffering, Parliament and the House of Lords were engaged in a day long ratification of the Brexit treaty agreed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government with the European Union (EU). A foregone conclusion, the government won the vote in the House of Commons by 521 to just 73 against, a majority of 448. The Bill was sent to the House of Lords, where it was passed before receiving Royal Assent around midnight. With EU member states already endorsing the treaty, it will be implemented by Brussels and London from 11pm on December 31.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson signs the post Brexit trade deal on December 30, 2020 inside No 10 Downing Street (picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street-FlickR))

Straight after a Commons debate in which all parties and MPs for and against the treaty posed as loyal defenders of the “national interest”, the government confirmed its indifference to the public health catastrophe threatening millions by announcing that all primary school would open as planned on January 4, and all secondary schools would follow —after a meaningless two week delay—on January 18. This is despite the fact that they were forced to take, with the virus raging throughout the country, the token action of placing another 21 million people in England under Tier 4, the highest level of still limited restrictions.

The debate on the 85 page European Union (Future Relationship) Bill was in reality over the 1,246-page Brexit deal Johnson signed last week. It was rushed through in just five hours, with under 60 MPs called to speak. Not one had anything to say that did not start and finish without upholding the interest of the City of London and Britain’s major corporations.

Johnson has a parliamentary majority of 80 and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer had whipped his 200 MPs to back the government. The pro-EU Scottish National Party (47 MPs) and Liberal Democrats (11) and the Democratic Unionist Party (8) voted against but comprised a small minority in the 650-seat chamber.

Proceedings were dominated by mutual back slapping from the government benches, with non-stop gloating from its hard Brexit wing. There was mainly a collective sigh of relief from the Labour opposition benches.

Mark Francois, the chair of the anti-EU European Research Group (ERG), declared, “What I call the 'Battle for Brexit' is now over. We won." Referring to the sections of the ERG who refused to back the “soft Brexit” deal Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May agreed with the EU, leading to her downfall, Francois spoke of “my Spartan friends” who could now “lower our spears”. Inevitably alluding to the Second World War, he concluded, “We’re about to write a new chapter in what Sir Winston Churchill called our ‘island’s story’.”

Starmer said that voting for a “thin deal is better than no-deal” and was in the “national interest”. This was a “simple vote with a simple choice: do we leave the transition period with the treaty negotiated with the EU or do we leave with no-deal?”

His only concerns were the impact on big business if the deal was not passed, “If we choose not to, the outcome is clear. We leave the transition period without a deal, without a deal on security, on trade, on fisheries, without protection for our manufacturing sector, for farming, for countless British businesses and without a foothold to build a future relationship with the EU,” said Starmer.

He then made a few criticisms of the treaty, saying it would lead to an "avalanche of checks, bureaucracy and red tape for British businesses".

Prior to his speech, Starmer pledged in the Guardian that he would be “supporting the government where it’s necessary to do so and criticising and challenging where it is necessary to do so.”

Summing up the debate for Labour, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves complained that “Farmers, carmakers and our chemicals industry” would now all “all face extra delays, costs and bureaucracy when taking their goods to European markets.” She declared, “More than 80 percent of our economy is made up of services, yet not one of the 1,246 pages of the treaty gives any additional opportunities for those sectors… The EU has a trade surplus in goods with us, and it fought to keep it. We have a trade surplus on services, and the Government have done nothing to protect it.”

Nevertheless “a deal of any form provides a degree of stability, which is what businesses craves,” she insisted.

Johnson was able to declare of Labour MP Peter Kyle, “It is great to hear a member of the Labour party not only backing the bankers and backing financial services—a fantastic development—but also backing this deal.”

Prior to the vote, there was talk of a rebellion of up to 60 Labour MPs, including among the “left” in the Socialist Campaign Group’s (SCG) 30 or so members.

In the event just 36 Labour MPs abstained—made up of Blairites who have never been reconciled to leaving the EU, along with a few supporters of the party’s nominally left former leader Jeremy Corbyn. Three pro-EU right wingers on Starmer’s front bench resigned after abstaining.

Only one of the MPs identified as a Corbyn supporter, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, actually voted against the Bill. Corbyn’s former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell abstained, as did former shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, after first announcing she would vote against. SCG chair Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler also abstained to ensure that they didn’t fall foul of Starmer by directly opposing one of his diktats.

Corbyn too abstained on the vote, even though he doesn’t have to abide by the Labour Whip after having been booted out of the party as part of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt being carried out by Starmer!

Those who abstained were as keen as Johnson and Starmer to profess their loyalty to British capitalism.

Corbyn made a pro-forma complaint that “protecting workers rights, and environmental standards” was “dependent on whether or not they have any effect on ‘trade or investment’.” But his main complaint was that the deal could not be backed as it “does not secure trade or conditions for our future outside the European Union. It paves the way in the future for very disadvantaged trade deals with other countries, particularly the United States.”

In an article in the Stalinist Morning Star, SCG member Claudia Webbe complained, “This deal is also bad for British manufacturing,” making it “very difficult for British car firms to export tariff-free into the EU.” Saying that “British steel is an obvious example,” she added, “This deal also makes it harder for the UK to step in and save firms that are of strategic importance to the UK economy.”

Abbott listed among her reasons for abstaining the fact that the deal “falls short in many policy areas, but I want to talk about security.” Johnson “claimed that they were going to get ‘a security partnership of unprecedented breadth and depth’”. Yet, “On the contrary, our access to Europol and to Eurojust has been compromised, and we will no longer have access to the European arrest warrant and to EU databases that allow for realtime data sharing, such as the Schengen Information System, and are valuable to our police and the National Crime Agency. The database was consulted over 600 million times by UK police forces in 2019.”

The obscene spectacle in Parliament confirmed that the working class has nothing in common with any of the factions of the ruling class or its political parties, including the ever dwindling rump of the Corbynite “left”. For working people protecting the safety of their families, their jobs and livelihoods can only proceed through a unified struggle with workers throughout Europe against Europe’s ruling elites and their governments and for socialism.

Spanish officers plot fascist coup to impose “herd immunity” COVID-19 policy

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

The stream of revelations of fascist sympathies and calls for mass murder in the Spanish army constitute a warning to the Spanish and international working class. Broad sections of the Spanish political establishment have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by planning for a dictatorship. While ostensibly targeting the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, which has tried to lull workers to sleep by denying the mounting evidence that officers are plotting a coup, the coup is in fact aimed at working class opposition to the ruling elite’s murderous “herd immunity” policy.

Members of Military Emergency Unit arrive at Abando train station, in Bilbao, northern Spain earlier this year. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

These revelations are all the more significant in that they come amid a generalized, international breakdown of democratic forms of rule. After attempting to order US military units to attack protests against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis this spring, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated his willingness to defy the results of the 2020 US presidential elections. In Germany, moreover, far-right operatives who participated in the murder of politician Walter Lübcke were released as details emerged of widespread neo-Nazi networks in the army.

This month, retired Spanish Air Force Lieutenant Colonel José Ignacio Domínguez spoke to the press after hundreds of retired officers sent letters pledging to support King Felipe VI against the PSOE-Podemos government. Domínguez knows the signatories of the letters personally. He was in WhatsApp chat groups where officers called to murder “26 million” people and imitate General Francisco Franco’s fascist coup that launched the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. The members of these chat groups received friendly messages of support from the fascist Vox party.

In radio interviews, Domínguez traced the coup threats to “the radicalization of Vox” in March: “It coincides with what they called Operation Albatross, that is to create a government of National Salvation. They wanted the Minister of Defence [Margarita Robles] to be prime minister […]- They started to mobilise people in the other promotions of the air force and army […]. As they gave up seeing the king, they agreed on the letters and mobilized the others.”

He added that “there has been and there exists a movement for a pronunciamiento,” that is, an attempt to shift politics to the right by threatening a coup. Speaking of the chat participants, he said: “They are not monarchists or constitutionalists, they are Francoites and they defend dictatorship. I’m not only talking about the past ones, but the future ones. They aspire to a dictatorship.”

The timing is significant: discussion of Operation Albatross began in March, as a wave of wildcat strikes spread across Europe against the European Union’s (EU) herd immunity policy. It was amid the initial upsurge of COVID-19 in Europe, which killed nearly 50,000 people and infected over half a million in Spain alone. The wildcat strikes forced the PSOE-Podemos government to implement a shelter-at-home policy, in line with several other EU governments, including France and Italy, a policy that Vox and the right-wing Popular Party (PP) denounced as a move towards “dictatorship.”

Behind Vox’s calls for a dictatorship and the army’s calls for coups and mass murder were powerful sections of the bourgeoisie not only in Spain but across the EU and internationally. They were determined to impose a back-to-work policy, leading to millions of new infections concentrated, above all in the working class, so as to shovel trillions of euros in European Union (EU) bank bailouts and corporate profits into the pockets of the financial aristocracy.

Vox was soon openly appealing to the army to oppose the PSOE-Podemos government. On April 19, Vox lawmaker Rocío de Meer—the granddaughter of Carlos de Meer, a military governor under Franco who after the Transition to parliamentary rule in 1978 was accused of plotting to topple a PSOE government in 1986—Tweeted: “Today more than ever it is time to remind the armed forces that the nation is not the same as the state. And they pledged loyalty to the first.”

The first public mention of Operation Albatross came on April 21, when far-right news site Mil21 published an article titled “Operation Albatross Arises to Reroute the Political and Economic Situation.” It includes a photograph of a file whose cover reads: “Operation Albatross. Simulation and stages for its urgent implementation given the socio-political and economic gravity that is expected in the next ten years in Spain. … Do not send through computer networks.”

The article’s author, Joaquín Abad, linked Operation Albatross to the political and stock market crisis caused by the pandemic. He claimed the report aimed to “redirect the disastrous economic, social and political situation currently being experienced in Spain. Aggravated, of course, by the pandemic whose effects are estimated to last a decade.” Operation Albatros, Abad added, aims “to neutralize [Prime Minister] Pedro Sánchez and [Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister] Pablo Iglesias.”

Significantly, Abad was the chief of reporters of daily El Alcázar, a far-right newspaper published from 1936 to 1988. During the Transition from Francoite to parliamentary rule, El Alcázar played a leading role in the army’s coup plots between 1977 and 1982. It regularly published articles in favour of coups—including one shortly before the 23 February 1981 coup attempt, when Antonio Tejero led 200 armed Civil Guard officers into the parliament during the vote to elect a Prime Minister.

Soon after, further reports began circulating on Operation Albatross. Former Lieutenant Colonel Fernando Reinlein reported, in a May 20 Infolibre article titled “The coup plotters warm up the engines,” that the right-wing press was campaigning for a coup. He wrote that “a certain number of pamphlets and so-called reports, such as the one on Operation Albatross, are ‘discreetly’ circulating among the [press] offices and corporate boardrooms.”

At that time, Vox was backing small, far-right protests against the lockdown in affluent districts of Madrid, denouncing the PSOE and Podemos as a “social-communist” government.

Significantly, the PSOE-Podemos government reacted to the coup threats by doubling down on the “herd immunity” and austerity policies demanded by the army brass, and which it was in any case already trying to implement. While making no effort to establish an effective track-and-trace system after the premature end of the lockdown, the PSOE and Podemos enthusiastically backed EU bank bailouts. At the same time, having already ordered riot police to assault steelworkers striking for the right to shelter at home, they intensified mass Internet spying on the population.

Iglesias had joined the Intelligence Affairs Commission, which supervises the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), in February. Soon after, the CNI was actively carrying out mass online surveillance using ELISA cyber-security software. As the WSWS reported, this was then followed in May with the police’s “Delta Papa Order 21/20” to use mass surveillance against the “high probability” of growing social unrest while the government de-escalated COVID-19 measures.

While the principal target of PSOE-Podemos surveillance was the working class, they also monitored far-right coup plotting and calls for anti-government uprisings on hundreds of far-right web sites. Thus the Interior Ministry has recently approved new guidelines for the Permanent Centre for Information and Coordination. Leaked by El Confidencial Digital, the guidelines show that one of the main targets of monitoring are “involucionista” groups. This term is typically used by the intelligence services to designate military forces opposed to the Transition from Francoism to parliamentary rule.

The PSOE and Podemos were, however, deafeningly silent on the danger of a fascist coup, even though they were well aware of the coup plots hatched by Vox and the officer corps. This underlay the comments of Pablo Iglesias to Vox parliamentary spokesman Iván Espinosa de los Monteros in May; while cryptic, they made clear that Iglesias was well aware of the “Operation Albatross” plans.

Iglesias said he was “willing to talk with anyone,” including Vox, “even if it seems that they are closer to wanting to carry out a coup d’état than to protect democracy.” When Espinosa demanded a rectification, Iglesias replied: “I’m going to be even more precise. I believe that you would like to carry out a coup, but that you don’t dare. Because for that, in addition to wanting it and asking for it, you have to dare.”

In June of this year, the PSOE-Podemos government suddenly dismissed Civil Guard Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, who until then had enjoyed the unanimous support of the Spanish political establishment for his role in leading the brutal police repression of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. The official reason given was a “loss of trust” in Pérez de los Cobos. Interior Ministry sources soon stated he was behind a court case against the PSOE-Podemos government, suing it for allowing a March 8 feminist demonstration in Madrid despite the pandemic.

A political storm ensued when Vox, PP and the right-wing media came to Cobos’ defence. It got to the point that Defence Minister Margarita Robles was asked on Onda Cero radio if there was a coup danger. She said, “forthrightly no,” adding: “No one has the right to capitalize on our armed forces or our flag. ... I firmly believe that there is no danger of a coup by the armed forces.”

Significantly, the dismissal of Pérez de los Cobos came amid a wave of mass, multiracial protests across the United States, Europe and internationally after the police murder of George Floyd. Spanish far-right circles were hysterical over both the dismissal and the global protests against police violence.

Abascal, who had traveled to Washington in February to hear Trump speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), hailed Trump as he tried to illegally mobilize the military against the protests. Abascal tweeted: “The progressive European and American mafia are trying to impose a spring of rage on the United States. The same progressive millionaires and their media started the Arab Spring which caused wars and immigration. Our support goes to President Trump and North American institutions.”

The PSOE-Podemos government’s denials of the coup threats have only aided the conspirators. In November, a political crisis erupted amid revelations of widespread calls for a fascist coup in the officer corps. Hundreds of former officers sent three different letters to King Felipe VI, pressing him to launch a coup against the PSOE-Podemos government, stressing their “oath to defend the integrity of Spain and the constitutional order, giving our lives if necessary.”

In December, a manifesto signed by nearly 500 former military personnel attacked the PSOE-Podemos government, a few days after it emerged that a group of retired air force officers had used a WhatsApp group to talk about “shooting 26 million sons of bitches,” and describing Franco as the “irreplaceable one.” Vox openly endorsed the signatories of the letters, saying “Of course they are our people” in parliament. The PP endorsed them as “concerned citizens.”

The PSOE-Podemos government is continuing to furiously insist that nothing of any significance is occurring. Defence Minister Robles stressed her loyalty to Sánchez, telling La Vanguardia editorialist Enric Juliana she “had no news of that supposed operation. I had other things to attend to. […] I consider myself a serious, rigorous person, who has a strong commitment to the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. I am going to continue with that commitment. These maneuvers are the furthest thing from me and the vast majority of citizens.”

Iglesias was sent out to downplay the fascist danger after the publication of the fascist WhatsApp chats, giving a prime-time television interviews to brazenly insist that nothing important had been revealed. He said, “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.” His mission was to dampen mounting outrage among workers and youth that was pouring out on social media.

This has since been exposed as a fraud. La Marea leaked videos showing soldiers chanting and dancing to Neo-Nazi songs while making the fascist salute, and Público leaked fascistic WhatsApp chats from soldiers. Iglesias has remained silent on these revelations.

These events vindicate the assessment made by the WSWS: the pandemic is a trigger event in world history. Before the pandemic, faced with mounting working class anger at unsustainable levels of social inequality, the bourgeoisie across Europe was rehabilitating fascism and integrating neo-fascist parties into official life. The rise of Vox, like that of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the brutal police crackdown on the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, all pointed to this.

The staggering death toll of over 530,000 Europeans and 1.8 million worldwide has vastly intensified these antagonisms. EU propaganda that the Transition from Francoism to parliamentary rule and Spain’s integration into the EU had ended the era of fascism and violent military conspiracy stands exposed. In reality, the same objective contradictions of capitalism that led Franco to launch his coup in the 20th century and the Spanish bourgeoisie to rally behind him are driving a turn towards authoritarian forms of rule to impose the banks’ “herd immunity” diktat in the 21st.

Public threats of a neo-Francoite coup in Spain and the treacherous response of Podemos constitute a warning: the lessons of the 1930s must be learned. There is no “progressive” faction of the capitalist establishment, including the “left populists” of Podemos, which the working class can try to pressure to obtain a less callous and repressive policy. Podemos has responded to protests with a vicious policy of “herd immunity” and austerity, while covering up plans for militarized repression. They will respond to a broader movement by shifting further to the right.

Coronavirus deaths reach record high in Germany as hospitals teeter on brink of collapse

Marianne Arens

The death toll from the coronavirus continues to grow relentlessly. Approximately 1.8 million people have died worldwide and more than 81.5 million have been infected. On Monday, the death toll since the beginning of the pandemic in Germany surpassed the 30,000 mark. Since December 10, more than 10,000 people have died, which equates to an average of over 500 per day, or one death every three minutes.

More than 1.66 million people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in Germany, although the number of undetected cases is much higher. Over the holiday period, significantly fewer cases have been recorded and transmitted to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s national agency for infectious diseases. On Tuesday, the RKI reported almost 13,000 infections and 852 deaths for the previous 24 hours. On Wednesday morning, the RKI reported 22,459 infections and 1,129 deaths, the first time the daily death toll has surpassed 1,000.

Patient in intensive care unit (Photo: Frank C. Müller, Baden-Baden / CC-BY-SA 4.0)

The fact that the situation is worsening by the day is shown above all by conditions in hospitals. For months, health care staff have been struggling in hospitals to save lives, but the conditions are increasingly catastrophic due to high infection rates. Nurses in Hamburg went public to speak about working conditions shortly before Christmas. The private management of Asklepios Clinics (AK) threatened a nurse with the loss of her job as a result.

Romana Knezevic spoke openly on public broadcaster NDR’s Hamburg Journal show about the conditions at AK St. Georg. “The situation is extremely serious,” she said on December 17. “The intensive care capacity is totally used up.” For some time, they had been short-staffed, especially in intensive care, she continued. Then, the coronavirus pandemic came along and “a flood of coronavirus patients we have to care for in addition, that breaks all structures,” added Knezevic.

“The intensive care colleagues are working with staff-to-patient ratios of one to five; normally it would be one to two or one to one,” she continued. In addition, “we have to take over tasks from the cleaning personnel and service staff. Just like us, they have also been cut back to the bone.” The situation is a tremendous burden for health care staff, especially because it is no longer even possible to provide patients with dignified end-of-life care. “The patients die alone in their rooms,” she said.

The response of the hospital’s management was swift. Instead of seriously investigating the terrible conditions and working rapidly to improve them, they threatened to fire the courageous nurse. A spokesman of the Asklepios Clinics told the Hamburger Morgenpost that it is “unacceptable for employees to deliberately spread false information to media outlets or portray emergency situations as the norm for ideological or political motivations.” This would shake the confidence of Hamburg’s population, they added.

Statements of solidarity with Romana have continued to grow in response. The Hamburg Hospital Movement, a nurses’ organisation, described her threatened firing as a “transparent attempt at intimidation” and confirmed that it had triggered “outrage and anger” among nurses. One user wrote on Twitter, “Are you being damned serious? (Now) firing people for their criticism? Solidarity with Romana Knezevic!”

The reliability of Knezevic’s testimony is underscored by the fact that a growing number of hospitals report that their intensive care facilities are operating at the limits of their capacity. Several hospitals in Thuringia issued emergency calls over the Christmas period, and the Eisenach hospital explicitly declared that it cannot take any more coronavirus patients.

The Eichsfeld hospital also stated that it is operating at its capacity limit, as it has permanently been treating around 30 seriously ill coronavirus patients. “In addition, between six and eight of them are in intensive care,” the hospital’s medical director told the Thüringer Allgemeine. “If there is now an increase, we won’t be able to care for routine cases.” Emergencies have already been directed to other hospitals, such as the university hospital in Göttingen. “We will only get respite by reducing the number of coronavirus infections and thus the serious cases as well,” they added.

The steps required to reduce coronavirus cases and bring the pandemic under control have been well known for a long time. This was pointed out recently by the virologist Prof. Melanie Brinkmann in comments to the Tagesthemen show on public broadcaster ARD. She noted that the official target incidence rate of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants within a seven-day period is much too high. “That is not an incidence at which we have control,” she said. Only when the incidence sinks below 20 will the local health offices be able to work effectively, find all those infected through tests, and isolate all contacts. The current incidence is 150 nationally, although some regions, such as Meißen and the Vogtland district in Saxony, are well over 500.

In a detailed report in Der Spiegel on Christmas Day, statements from leading virologists on the new coronavirus strain that emerged in England and has spread rapidly around the world were presented. The scientists were agreed that the first and decisive countermeasure must consist of a drastic reduction of infections.

Virologist Isabella Eckerle from the University Hospital of Geneva pointed out that almost all countries have “reached the limits of their health care systems, intensive care units, lab tests, and contact tracing.” A more infectious strain would “lead to a tragedy in January and February,” the virologist warned. “It would be a mistake to first await the confirmation of the presence of the new virus strain in various countries.” In a tweet from December 24, Eckerle advised, “On the basis of this data, the geographical region of Europe (not just the EU) should prepare for a coordinated, complete lockdown.”

But this will only happen if the working class intervenes independently into political events and enforces a lockdown by means of a Europe-wide general strike. Governments of all political stripes have, by contrast, made absolutely clear that they want to lift the limited lockdowns as quickly as possible so as not to threaten the profits of the banks and big business.

A drastic example of the dominance of the capitalist profit system is the closure of hospitals during the pandemic for the sole reason that their operation is “uneconomical.” Shortly before Christmas, the hospital in Ingelheim was closed, with the loss of 190 jobs. “It was an intact facility, with staff and ventilators, everything that we urgently need in the pandemic,” Works Councillor Stefanie Klemann told Radio FFH. The decision to close the facility at this point confirms the catastrophic consequences of the austerity and privatisation policies over the past 30 years. In fact, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation study published last year, fewer than 600 of the current 1,400 hospitals are planned for retention.

Macron government rejects national lock-down in France

Samuel Tissot

Yesterday, French authorities reported that 969 people had died in the space of 24 hours on December 29, bringing the official total in the past week to 2,376, and the total since the beginning of the pandemic to 64,078. Over ten thousand cases are being reported every day, though this is likely a significant underestimate due to reduced testing through the holiday period. Over 48 hours from December 24 to 25, more than 40,000 new cases were recorded. As of yesterday, 24,776 people remained hospitalized with COVID-19 in the country.

French President Emmanuel Macron (Image Credit: AP Photo/Francois Mori)

On Monday evening, Health Minister Olivier Véran appeared on the France 2 evening news following a meeting of the defense council that morning. Despite the catastrophic and accelerating situation in France, Véran announced that the government “reject[s] the idea of general or local lockdowns.” The only new measures announced on Tuesday were that twenty departments, predominantly in the East of France, may see curfew measures brought forward by two hours to 6:00 p.m., beginning on January 2. Crucially, these measures do not include the closure of schools, nor the stopping of non-essential work.

The Eastern departments are emerging as the new epicenters of the virus in France. In the week from December 18 to 24, the departments of Doubs, Ardennes, Meurthe-et-Moselle, and Alpes-Maritimes recorded incidence rates of over 300 per 100,000, or over twice the national average. On December 29, the Grand-Est region recorded 68 deaths, overtaking Île-de-France as the region with the highest daily death-toll, despite having under half of the capital region’s population.

A document also made public on December 29 showed that the government-appointed COVID-19 Scientific Council warned leading ministers on December 23 that an “uncontrolled resumption of the epidemic is probable” in January. The council proposed three options, two of which included new lockdown measures to be implemented on December 28 in the one case, and January 2 in the other. The warning was not made public until six days later.

Desperate to avoid any disruption to the extraction of profit from French workers in the new year, the Macron government has instead opted to pursue the third option, described as a “later response” by the council that tweaks minor measures at a local level depending on the rate of hospital admissions. The council warned that this option “presents the risk of intervening too late and then leading to more sever, longer, and restrictive measures” at a later date.

Though not stated by the council’s report, the obvious implication is that it will also include additional preventable deaths. The Macron government is pursuing a policy that it knows will lead to tens of thousands of deaths and threaten to overwhelm the hospital system.

The extended curfew is a bit-part measure that will have a limited effect on the extent of the virus’ spread in the Eastern regions. In October, the national health authority reported that over 60 percent of COVID-19 clusters occurred in workplaces and schools. Nevertheless, Véran dismissed the findings as insignificant. A study published in November in Nature found that “school closures in the United States have been found to reduce COVID-19 incidence and mortality by about 60 percent.” Another July study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that “school closure was associated with a significant decline in both incidence of COVID-19 and…mortality.”

Despite Macron’s claims that “Reason and science” should be the guide for the coronavirus response, his government’s murderous policy flies in the face of the advice of both government-appointed and independent scientists.

Véran used his appearance on France 2 to promote the approval of the vaccine in France on December 27. While the vaccine offers the very real possibility of controlling the virus in the long-term, its premature promotion as a success story is a cynical distraction from the government’s current policy of “herd immunity” that will lead to tens of thousands of extra deaths before the summer.

As of Tuesday evening, only 100 people had received their first dose in France. Even if the goal of one million vaccinations by the end of February is reached, millions would have to be vaccinated each week after that period to provide immunity to the general population before the end of the year. As was the case with the government’s widely promoted, but drastically underfunded, test and trace system implemented after the first lock-down which failed to ascertain over 90 percent of infections, the roll-out of the vaccine will be subordinated to the profit interests of the ruling elite.

Hundreds of billions that could have been used by the Macron government to expand testing and tracing capacity, hire more health care workers, and improve hospitals were instead handed over to large corporations and banks.

The government has only enacted limited measures to maintain the pretense of a fight against the virus. It ended the second, limited lockdown in December although its own sub-5000 daily case threshold for loosening restrictions was never close to being reached. As the second wave rapidly accelerated in October and November, workers were kept on the job, and the government used the police to violently force striking students into schools. Tens of thousands have died unnecessarily as a result of these policies.

Another concern is the detection in France on December 26 of more contagious variant of the virus first sequenced in the United Kingdom. In the space of the last 48 hours the UK has recorded more than 100,000 cases, approximately five times the number reported in France. It has already been reported across multiple European countries, including Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Yesterday, German authorities revealed that the strain had been circulating in the country at least as early as November.

The emergence of a new and even more infectious strain of the virus only increases the urgency with which effective measures to control the virus must be introduced. A group of scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled the effect of the new variant on the spread of the virus in England. They concluded that “control measures of a similar stringency to the national lockdown implemented in England in November 2020 are unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number R to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed.”

Going into the worst of the cold season, the policy of keeping millions of workers at work and children in school—followed by capitalist governments across Europe—ensures that hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost in a horrific winter of death. With the vaccine only beginning to be rolled out, stopping this requires the closure of schools and non-essential production. The decisive question is the political mobilization of the working class to oppose the ruling elite’s politically-criminal policy and impose a scientifically-based fight against the virus.

Spain to cut pensions as billions go to super-rich in EU pandemic bailout

Alice Summers

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is preparing to cut pensions by around 5.5 percent and raise the retirement age to 67 over the next six years. The attack on pensions is one of a series of cuts to basic social programs the government are carrying out at the European Union’s (EU) behest in exchange for hundreds of billions of euros in COVID-19 pandemic bailout funds.

Spain is to receive €140 billion of the EU’s €750 billion coronavirus stimulus package, including €72 billion in grants. A draft law unveiled in late November made clear this funding will be funneled directly to the banks and large corporations. This process will be overseen by the “left populist” Podemos party.

People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

According to a draft by PSOE Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, the number of working years taken into account in calculating pension benefits will rise to 35. This would slash the average pension payment retirees receive.

Workers are generally on better contracts and pay in the later years of their working life, and so contribute more to the pensions system at the end of their careers. Calculating pensions based on an average wage across almost the entire working life ensures that most workers will end up with a far smaller pot than they would with a calculation based only on the later years.

Pensions have been in the firing line of both PSOE and right-wing Popular Party (PP) governments for decades. Increasing the number of years used to calculate a worker’s pension has been a key part of both PSOE and PP cuts. In 1985, only the last two years of working life were used to compute retirement, rising to 11 and then 15 years. In 2011, a pension bill agreed by the unions and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s PSOE government laid out plans to increase this from 15 to 25 years between 2013 and 2022.

The current plan to suddenly raise this figure to 35 amid the social crisis caused by the pandemic represents a drastic escalation of austerity. The 2011 legislation would have raised the number of years used for pension calculations to 25 by 2022. Escrivá’s proposal was not included in recommendations published in October by the Toledo Pact commission—a permanent, cross-party non-legislative body set up in 1995 to propose attacks on pensions.

The Toledo Pact recommendations include eliminating the social security deficit by 2023; encouraging workers to keep working past the official retirement age; stepping up inspections and sanctions for alleged fraud; and pressing workers to invest in private pension plans.

While PSOE Economy Minister Nadia Calviño claimed “workers will be able to exclude the worst years of their contributions” from the calculation, it is unclear how this would be done. Whatever calculation methodology is eventually agreed by the PSOE and Podemos, it will provide little comfort to the millions of workers set to lose much of their retirement.

The retirement age will also rise to 66 years in 2021, up from the current 65. This is in line with the proposals set out by the PSOE government of Zapatero in 2011 and ratified in 2013, which introduced legislation to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 years of age by 2027.

If a worker chooses to take early retirement at 65 years of age, they will only be able to draw a state pension if they have worked and made pension contributions for at least 37 years and three months. By 2027, this will rise to 38 years and six months.

According to the draft document sent by Escrivá to other government ministers, the new pension plan will see an average cut in each worker’s retirement fund of 5.5 percent. The amount lost by workers will vary from 3 percent and 7 percent based on factors like age, salary and number of years worked.

This will significantly exacerbate the dire situation facing retirees in Spain, many of whom face poverty and insecurity in their old age after decades of toil.

In 2019, roughly 1.6 million retirees in Spain were in poverty, meaning that they received less than €9,000 a year in pension income, according to Spanish government figures. This is 12.7 percent of Spain’s approximately 6.09 million retirees. Around 555,000 (9 percent) were in severe poverty, receiving less than €6,000 annually.

These figures rise to around 31.1 percent in poverty and 14.2 percent in severe poverty if all types of pensions are taken into account—including for those with permanent disabilities, for widows and widowers, and for orphans.

This bill exposes the reactionary class interests served by Podemos, a “left populist” party of the affluent middle class. It is a tool of the banks. Indeed, Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias hailed the EU pandemic bailout, declaring: “For the first time in the history of the EU, a package of subsidies financed with joint debt is being proposed. Eurobonds, which seemed unfeasible a few years ago, are now a reality and will serve to face this crisis in a different way, without social cuts.” This is exposed as a pack of lies.

Like its Greek ally Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”), Podemos supports slashing wages and living standards. This is why Podemos also voted to accept the Toledo Pact’s recommendations in November, which intensify attacks proposed by Zapatero in 2011.

Podemos is cynically posturing as an opponent of the pension cut, with its spokesperson Isa Serra declaring that the pension reform is “going backwards.” This is a pathetic charade: they are members of the very government imposing these attacks.

The PSOE-Podemos government also plans to freeze Spain’s minimum wage, which now stands at a paltry €950 a month—though in-work poverty rose by 16 percent from 2010 and 2019, even before the devastating impact of the pandemic. Across Spain, 12.7 percent of workers were in poverty in 2019, according to a study from the European Confederation of Unions. This makes Spain the sixth-worst affected country in terms of the increase in the number of working poor out of the 27 EU member states.

Exposing the class interests involved in the attacks on pensions, Escrivá’s pension proposal came as it was reported that €113 billion of bad debt held by Spain’s banks had been backed up by state guarantees from the government’s Official Credit Institute. This is far in excess of the roughly €14 billion Madrid expects to have spent on ERTE income support schemes for workers affected by the pandemic by the end of 2020.

The wide-ranging attacks on the pay and pensions make clear that the ruling elite intends to claw back every cent of its bailout of big business from the working class. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, billions of euros were handed to the banks and large corporations by the European and international governments, while millions of workers lost jobs and incomes or were forced to continue working and risk exposure to the potentially deadly virus.

Meanwhile, the elderly and vulnerable, who are seen as a drain on resources by the ruling class if they can no longer work, were left to die in droves in care homes and hospitals.

The coronavirus pandemic has starkly posed the basic necessity of expropriating the wealth of the financial oligarchy in order to provide for workers’ social needs, including the fundamental right to a dignified and comfortable retirement.

US-China tensions at center of fight over Philippine vaccine procurement

John Malvar

The availability and distribution of a vaccine for COVID-19 in the Philippines has become the subject of a fierce dispute bound up with the struggle over the geopolitical allegiance of Manila to either the United States or China. While the lives and health of millions are at stake, under conditions of mass hunger and pandemic, and with no prospect of a vaccine yet available in the country, the ruling elite are fighting over participation in the war plans of Washington.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte stated on December 26 that he would terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) unless the US provided the Philippines with vaccines. “If they are not able to deliver a minimum of 20 million vaccines, they better get out,” he told the press. “No vaccine, no stay here.”

A medical worker attending to a patient in Manila (Local Government of Manila)

The VFA, signed in 1998, governs the presence of US troops in the country and is a critical foundation for the joint military exercises conducted by Washington in the region. These military exercises have over the past decade turned to an ever-more openly aggressive targeting of China, in the name of maritime security. In 2019, the US military conducted over 300 such joint exercises under the auspices of the VFA.

Duterte’s threat of this past week is the continuation of an ongoing struggle over the VFA. On February 11, Duterte first announced that he would be terminating the VFA. Duterte was responding to the cancelation of Senator Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa’s US visa. De la Rosa, former head of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and long-time ally of Duterte, was instrumental in the creation of the Duterte’s murderous nationwide “war on drugs.” Washington used the issue of human rights violations to attempt to pressure the Duterte administration away from its growing alliance with Beijing.

As the WSWS wrote at the time, the cancelation of the VFA was “the most serious rupture in relations between Manila and its former colonial master since the granting of formal independence on July 4, 1946.”

The termination of the VFA was scheduled to take effect 180 days after the delivery of the notice to the US embassy in Manila, but in early June Duterte suspended the abrogation “in light of political and other developments in the region.” A critical consideration in the suspension was Duterte’s need to retain control over the Philippine military. The termination of the VFA had outraged a significant layer of the top brass and the possibility of a military coup d’état was the subject of public political discussion.

Then US Defense Secretary Mark Esper held a conference call with his Philippine counterpart, Delfin Lorenzana, in mid-June, in which he stated that the US would provide vaccines for COVID-19 to its “allies and partners.” He expressed “appreciation” for the Philippine military’s support for the government’s decision to suspend the termination. He was not thanking the government but the military itself as instrumental in the decision.

Strongly implied in Esper’s statement was the threat that if the VFA was terminated the US would no longer supply a vaccine to the Philippines, as it would no longer be a “partner.”

The termination of the VFA was suspended for six months and, unless Duterte extends the suspension, the 180-day clock on termination will resume ticking at the beginning of 2021.

Duterte’s renewed threat to the VFA was made in response to the fact that Singapore secured Pfizer-produced vaccines and would begin vaccinating the population, while the Philippines had received none. Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced in mid-December that someone in the Philippines government had “dropped the ball” and failed to sign a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA) with Pfizer. As a result, he stated, discussions with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke down and no vaccine was forthcoming.

Department of Health chief Francisco Duque, stated that his signature on the CDA, which was completed in mid-October, was not a factor in the supply of Pfizer’s vaccine. Carlito Galvez Jr., head of the Philippine vaccination program, explained that the Philippines could expect to receive Pfizer’s vaccine in the third quarter of 2021 “at the earliest.” The Philippines was not a priority target, because “wealthy countries” would receive the vaccine first.

The Philippines is scheduled to receive 2.6 million doses of the UK-based AstraZeneca vaccine in the second quarter of 2021. For a country with a population of 109 million people, this does not begin to remedy the problem. While looking to secure vaccines from the United States with threats to the VFA, the Duterte administration is also attempting to procure 25 million doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm or Sinovac vaccines.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, who has played a prominent role in pushing for Duterte to assert Philippine sovereignty over disputed portions of the South China Sea in opposition to China, weighed in with an op-ed column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on December 31. China, he speculated, could make “make access to its own vaccine subject to the condition that the Philippines must set aside its arbitral victory in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).”

Eric Domingo, director general of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), stated that the FDA would rush approval of vaccines approved in the US and UK, but would be strict about vaccines from China.

Duterte revealed on December 26 that his own Presidential Security Group (PSG), comprised of military forces under the direct supervision of the president, had been vaccinated in September and October despite the fact that no vaccine had yet been approved by FDA. A political firestorm erupted over this admission.

Defense Secretary Lorenzana stated that the vaccines administered to the PSG had been produced in China and were “smuggled” into the country. Menardo Guevarra, secretary of the Department of Justice, announced on December 30, that the National Bureau of Investigation would launch a probe of the alleged “smuggling.”

The working masses and poor of the Philippines are currently suffering the worst levels of hunger and malnutrition since the Japanese Occupation. Unemployment has skyrocketed under the conditions of extended lockdown. Indifferent to this suffering, the ruling elite see in the procurement of a vaccine a weapon in their fight over the geopolitical orientation of the country and their hold on power.

Freedom of Information request reveals surge of COVID-19 infections among London bus, rail and tube workers

Laura Tiernan

A video clip from the BBC documentary “Hospital” has been widely shared among bus drivers this past week. Filmed in October at London’s Barnet Hospital, it features doctors and nurses fighting to save the life of Mr Tang, a London bus driver with COVID-19.

A driver for 17 years, Mr Tang (his first name is not provided) explains that he became sick while working. He believes he may have caught the virus from passengers, telling the BBC’s interviewer that as many as 50 percent were not wearing face masks.

BBC interviewer: Were you not worried when the pandemic came? Did that not stop you from going to work?

Mr Tang: I’m serving London… Keep London moving.

BBC interviewer: How long have you been on this [hospital] unit?

Mr Tang: About four, five days.

BBC interviewer: And is your breathing getting better?

Mr Tang: Sometimes… Sometimes getting better. Sometimes getting worse.

Mr Tang, London bus driver

Mr Tang’s health quickly deteriorated. He developed COVID pneumonia, was admitted to the intensive treatment unit (ITU) and placed on a ventilator. Doctors prescribed experimental drug therapies, including Remdesivir and Baricitinib, the latter targeting the body’s immune response to COVID-19. After two months under the care of dedicated nurses and doctors, the 72-year-old bus driver was discharged. A postscript explains that Mr Tang “is considering retiring”.

The BBC’s episode struck a chord among bus workers as a rare instance of the dangers they face being acknowledged. Despite the widely publicised deaths of London bus drivers in April and May of this year, the spread of coronavirus among the city’s bus, rail and tube workforce has been systematically concealed. Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and his deputy, Heidi Alexander—respectively chair and deputy chair of Transport for London (TfL)—have suppressed information about the COVID-19 threat across the capital’s transport network to “keep London moving”.

Khan and Alexander have worked with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, enforcing its homicidal “herd immunity” strategy that prioritises the City of London (i.e., the stock exchange, banks and corporations) over the lives of the working class.

Throughout 2020, the Mayor’s office colluded with the major transport companies—Metroline, Abellio, GoAhead, RATP Dev and Arriva—to block information about the location of COVID-19 infections among its 25,000-strong workforce. They were backed by Unite the union, which helped conceal workplace transmission of the virus as part of their tripartite agreement with TfL and the bus operators pledging “industrial harmony” and “operational efficiency”.

Faced with this political conspiracy, on November 18 the London Bus Drivers Rank-and-File Safety Committee submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request asking TfL to provide the number and location of COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths among London Underground, rail, bus and private taxi workers for September, October and November.

TfL’s FOI response, received on December 16, came with lengthy qualifications, including an admission that: “While some information in relation to your questions has been reported to us from private operators, it is not necessarily consistent nor provided to us in all cases.” In other words, the information was incomplete. TfL also refused to provide any information about COVID-19 infections among taxi drivers, who are known to suffer among the highest occupational mortality rate from COVID-19.

Nonetheless, TfL’s FOI response has revealed the extent of COVID-19 exposure across the capital’s transport network.

According to TfL, Mr Tang was one of 98 London bus workers diagnosed with COVID-19 in October. By November, that number had nearly doubled, with 170 confirmed cases. No figures were available for December, but a further doubling would mean 340 bus workers are currently infected with COVID-19.

Across the London Underground, 33 Covid-positive tests were recorded in September, 122 in October and 121 in November, among frontline and office-based staff.

London’s rail services also registered an increase in COVID-19 infections, indicated by the following breakdown:

Tragically, the FOI request revealed that two more transport workers died from COVID-19 in October—a London bus worker and a London Underground (LU) worker—taking the official death toll to 46.

Miles Driver, a founding member of the London Bus Drivers Rank-and-File Safety Committee, a member of the Socialist Equality Party and a London bus driver for nearly 20 years, explained the background to the group’s FOI request. “In April and May, we lost 30 drivers to Covid. Back then, we found out through word-of-mouth, or when notices were put up that such-and-such colleague has died. We were deliberately kept in the dark, a huge factor in allowing the virus to spread and claim so many lives.

“By mid-September we were hearing reports about new infections. The company issued contact tracing letters, but we were none the wiser about the number or location of new cases. Once again the information was being concealed.”

In September, the newly formed rank-and-file committee issued an open letter to bus operator Metroline after a driver tested positive at Cricklewood garage. The committee demanded Metroline immediately inform workers about the number and location of COVID-19 infections and called for urgent safety measures, including mandatory onsite testing and full pay for bus workers needing to self-isolate.

Driver says Metroline made no formal reply to the committee’s letter, but within days, company executives held secret tripartite talks with TfL, Khan and Unite the union. The committee’s letter to Metroline went “viral” at the garages, says Driver, with Unite officials suddenly emailing their members, promising a “renewed safety campaign” including a demand for “reporting of positive testing to Unite”. Unite’s safety campaign and its pledge that “we will keep you informed” have proved to be a dead letter.

While TfL has provided a partial tally of COVID-19 infections among bus, rail and tube workers, they have refused to provide a breakdown by garage or depot. The reason is not hard to fathom. Khan and the transport companies are determined to conceal infection clusters showing workplace transmission of COVID-19.

In refusing to provide information on the location of Covid infections, TfL cited Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act: “TfL is not required to respond to a request if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere (calculated at a rate of £25 per hour).”

TfL, Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party and Unite hold workers’ lives in such low regard.