‘Boris Johnson is hoping that the vaccine will make us forget the catalogue of ongoing errors’

• HOW much longer are we going to tolerate the ongoing catastrophic handling of the Covid-19 crisis by Boris Johnson’s government. It appears all good advice is ignored and more and more people continue to die.

Independent SAGE and many others say that unless Johnson sorts out the track, trace, and isolate system and, most importantly, provides proper support for those who cannot financially or practically afford to isolate, the pandemic will continue to rage.

BBC Newsnight has reported that people in low-paid work are mostly not isolating (up to 70 per cent of positive cases) and even more are avoiding taking a test for fear of being told to isolate because they cannot afford to; 75 per cent of people who applied for the £500 offered by government to isolate were refused.

Employers are not being monitored to verify that workplaces have suitable Covid-19 precautions in place and many workers are being threatened with dismissal if they do not go in to work whether it is safe or not.

Teachers, nursery staff, supermarket staff and factory workers are worried for their safety and paramedics do not have proper PPE even at this late stage. The NHS is overwhelmed.

Johnson is obviously hoping that the arrival of the vaccine will make us all forget the catalogue of ongoing errors.

The vaccine, while probably welcome, does not at all guarantee the end of the transmission of Covid-19.

Indeed the various mutations of the virus may render it useless. These seem to be most prevalent in countries which have done very little to suppress the epidemic.

Lockdowns are a blunt instrument to bring down the R number but unless proper track, trace and isolate is put in place to counteract outbreaks, this epidemic will be never ending.

The Spanish flu in 1918 had four severe recurrences. We are only in our second.

This government has found £12billion for the disastrous Sirco track-and-trace programme but will not fund local public health services to do the job they are there to do.

If the public health services were good enough to cover the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury they are certainly more than capable of dealing with Covid-19.

Either this government hasn’t got a clue or they have an agenda. In either case, the first requirement of any government is to protect the population. In this, this government has categorically failed and should resign.

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