THE UK’s first timetable for actions on the coronavirus pandemic was “seriously flawed” and its implications for occupational health and safety were “considerable” according to a new study.
Its author – Professor Andrew Watterson – said the wisdom of the devolved executives in accepting the initial UK policy and assessments of pandemic risks, rather than those of the World Health Organisation (WHO) with extensive evidence-based reports, should be scrutinised once the crisis is over.
He said dedicated health and social care professionals, and other key workers around the world, put their lives at risk to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, he said for these workers to be effective it is vital to protect their health and safety now – and not in the unspecified future in unspecified ways.
“Failure to do so is ethically and morally wrong and has already had major repercussions for society, with increased morbidity and mortality,” he added.
Watterson, from the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group at Stirling University, said numerous lessons would be learnt – in many cases too late – about how we managed the pandemic in the UK and “frequently ignored both early warning and early guidance”.
He said: “These are not new lessons. Solutions to the hazards have been known and advocated in global and national agencies and by NGOs for many years.
“We can plan for military activities over decades, spend many billions of pounds on military equipment and training and launch huge expensive vanity projects in the UK.
“It should therefore be unproblematic to spend a few billion pounds planning in advance for a specific pandemic ‘war’ and equipping health and other workers with effective resources, staffing, training, procedures and equipment.”
He said many media conferences by the UK and devolved governments saw difficult questions go unanswered, such as the shortage of PPE, which emergency workers were having to buy, or make, themselves.
These daily stories “provided a damning indictment of the state of occupational health and safety across this country,” he said.
Watterson recommended active interventions from the UK and devolved administrations by properly staffed and resourced regulators, and effective consultation between employers and workforces about pandemic planning and working conditions.
He told The National: “There have been shameful failures in protecting not only health workers but all workers in the UK from the Covid pandemic.
“Too little has been done and too late in several cases ... Across the UK, governments have been slow to act on the pandemic. After it is over, there will be an urgent need to assess whether the UK Government advice ... on containment, testing, tracing, PPE provision and distribution was wise.
“Those decisions will have impacted health care and other workers’ health and safety through numbers of the public affected by Covid, the number of health care workers affected and the service delivery possible.”
He added: “The Scottish Government, it appeared, initially accepted UK Government advice without question, but later acted earlier and more prudently than Westminster with regard to social distancing and protecting workers on construction sites. That will probably have reduced health worker and others’ morbidity and mortality in the pandemic, freed up health care facilities and improved patient outcomes.”
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