 |
|
|
|
*Lack of testing *Lack of PPE for nurses, doctors and care workers * Inconsistent Figures for infections and deaths From the lack of PPE for NHS front-line staff, Care Workers to the lack of testing for the virus amongst front line NHS staff, those having to stay at home, and the 1.5 million at risk patients; the Governments answers have so far been simply regurgitated by the mainstream TV news media. All that changed today with several journalists beginning to question the honesty or correctness of the Government’s spokespersons statements and replies to questioning.
The figures are not consistent, depending upon which source you get them from, she said, “…and it seems to me that there is a systems problem that there is that this problem with not getting University labs up and running the problem with not getting the testing done quicker is it's inexplicable when we know just how urgent this problem is With regard to the official figures for death and those affected by Covid-19, she had this to say with regard to the way in which the figures are collated and the accuracy of daily reports: “We also saw a big jump in the absolute number of deaths being reported today but there is also some confusion around those numbers and they slightly change according to what you're looking at precisely.” When asked if she can explain this, she answered, “I can't actually can’t, I wish I could. But for all of us there are problems with all the numbers it's the same with the testing so it looks like some of the Trust's are reporting over three or four days we saw that with north work park last week some trusts are reporting on the day or up to the weekend. Then we have the Office of National Statistics figures which came out for the first time today which are looking at community deaths and deaths and care homes for instance now they increase the figures up to March the 20th the death rate figures by twenty four percent so you can see there is a problem already and comparing like with like. Yesterday we saw lower than expected death figures today seeing quite a big increase and it's very hard then to see where at whether there's a levelling off or where we are in terms of the epidemic except that we know probably that it is still going up and up and up.” She added: “Behind every single one of these figures are people real people and we probably can understand that there are some people out there who have died who we will never know had Coronavirus who it will never be attributed to because they weren't tested before they died or it wasn't put on the death certificate.” Here is a clip from her report that can be viewed in full on the Channel 4 News website here
Further on the question of testing, ITV’s Robert Peston posted this on his social media account (Twitter) specifically with regard to government claims today that the ‘reagent chemicals needed for testing kits was in short supply across the globe’: ‘Michael Gove said just now that the difficulty in increasing number of Covid-19 tests was due to a shortage of the relevant "chemical reagents". The Association also points out there was an industry chat with a business minister today, who made no attempt to find out if there was a supply problem for the vital ingredients of Covid-19 testing kits. So this question of why there aren't enough tests for the virus is an even bigger mystery. Also, if it turns out there is a shortage, these manufacturers are more than happy to increase their production. But they need to be asked, which has not happened. PS It was Labour MP Bill Esterson who initially spotted this gap between what Gove said and what the industry believes to be true.’ However, on the number of ventilators now available to the NHS, which were stated yesterday as being around 12,000 despite the official figures showing far less than that at 8,000 today the Government continued to quote the higher of these two figures. The same can be said of their claims on ventilators, saying yesterday that there would be a delivery of more of them next week, without stating how many! Today, the Daily Mirror reports the Government as now saying the number exactly is 30 ventilators to be delivered next week! There are those who believe the Government is trying to put a ‘good news’ spin on the situation, with Simon Stevens, head of NHS England talking as it there is no problems in terms of PPE stocks and blaming a mere logistical problems for those areas that seem to have a problem with having enough, or any; for nurses and doctors. The problem with that is that this excuse has been used for over a week now to answer critics, whilst in the meantime NHS staff are being threatened by their Trusts with the sack if they speak out to anyone in the media about such problems. Source: Channel 4 News / Robert Peston via Twitter / unionsafety
|
 |
Last evening on Channel 4 News, their Health correspondent, Victoria MacDonald made it clear in her very worrying report on the state of testing and on the true numbers of people suffering and dieing from the Covid-19 virus; said she was ‘baffled’ and that ‘something else must be going on’ as she tried to explain the position in with both issues.
Well I've just talked to the Chemical Industries Association, which represents the UK's very substantial chemicals industry. It has contacted its members, and they've said there is no shortage of the relevant reagents.