Hazards Campaign – News Release 2^nd November, 2020

A Government void of reality and enforcers avoiding reality!

This week the national Hazards Campaign will endorse a call for action to force the Government to take a Zero-Covid strategy to suppress the virus to save lives and livelihoods (1).  Throughout the pandemic the Hazards Campaign has argued that unsafe workplaces are infecting workers who transmit it on to families and communities driving up the overall infection rates.  The Government and its authorities continue to focus on demonising individuals, ignoring the role of the workplace as a source of infection and transmission and failing to enforce health and safety law that should ensure employers in every setting are controlling the risks.  Government failure to protect workers has also failed to protect communities.

Janet Newsham of the Hazards Campaign will say that “any Covid circuit-breaker must be part of a Zero-Covid strategy which includes high numbers of people tested, a high percentage of those positive cases traced, contacted, and people supported financially to isolate.  Anything less would be an abdication of government responsibility and a waste of valuable time to get the virus under control .  A circuit break must also ensure that all essential workplaces remaining open are Covid-safe (2).

“On the 5^th November we are going into a second national lockdown that will fail to reduce the transmission rate significantly if it leaves many unsafe workplaces open without adequate enforcement of the controls of risks, and if it doesn’t rebuild  a publicly owned Test, Trace and Isolate  with support system integrated in local public health and the NHS.”

In the North of England many people have been in almost continual restrictions throughout the pandemic and since forced return to unsafe workplaces including schools and universities  the transmission rates have continued to rise.  Unless this lockdown makes significant changes, it will causes much hardship for little benefit.

As we move to a second national lock-down, we should reflect on why we have got here and ensure lessons are learned.

• Our first lock-down was too little, and came too late and (the second one is also too little, and far too late) (3)
• Non-essential workplace continued to work during first lock down and unsafe workplaces have continued to work throughout the pandemic (4)
• Testing was inadequate, not available for many people
• Tracing was privatised and did not function at a high level of contact tracing
• People couldn’t afford to isolate without financial assistance and employers of precarious contracted workers threatened workers from isolating or stopped wages and hours
• Self employed workers were not financially supported (note many construction workers are self-employed)
• Thousands of jobs have been lost due to Government mishandling, leaving people with huge debts and extreme anxiety
• The NHS has been starved of resources and staff because of Government policies and Brexit
• The HSE and LA enforcers. starved of resources and staff over ten years, haven’t been able to inspect or enforce health and safety law (5)
• The Govt has lost credibility and squandered trust  – mixed messaging, confusing tiers/lockdowns, allowing one rule for us and another more lenient rule for the elite  ‘Cummingsgate’ (6)
• Schools, colleges, universities opened up for face to face teaching against the advice of scientists and trade unions and transmission rose dramatically  as forewarned (7)
• Public Health England scapegoated and disbanded in the middle of the current crisis

The Government were advised by their own SAGE  scientific experts to lock-down on 21^st September instead they opted for local lockdowns with confusing rules that couldn’t possibly work. (8)

For the circuit break to succeed, it must be on the basis of:

Closure of all non-essential workplaces;

Schools, colleges and universities closed to face to face teaching but supported to provide on-line teaching; support for in-school provision for key workers and vulnerable and deprived children;

Rebuilding a locally based, publicly run,  high contact and efficient test, track and isolate system is in place, with speedy results available for anyone that needs a test, and people supported financially to isolate.  This must be integrated with public health, the NHS and occupational health and safety.

Workplaces remaining open must be Covid-safe and not endanger the workers, their families and communities. Anyone is potentially infectious whether they show symptoms or not so all risks of transmission of the virus by any route must be controlled and enforced in all essential workplaces. This must include transmission by airborne aerosols which requires good ventilation, filtration and mask and PPE wearing. (9)

Workplaces that are closed must prepare to reopen safely as above.

Workers who have to be in work, need access to safe public transport and workers on public transport need their employers to ensure their safety and health and that of their customers.  The same applies to health and social care, retail staff, teachers, transport workers, postal workers and others in essential work.

For a zero-covid strategy to work it has to be done in conjunction with Covid-Safe Workplaces.  PHE and the HSE and local authority enforcers must be resourced to be able to carry out their primary functions.  Outbreaks must be result in on-site testing centres to open up immediately, and occupational health enforcement officers must be on hand to determine transmission routes.

Janet will say “Government advice must improve and change to take account of updated risks on transmission.  It is pointless regurgitating hollow rhetoric about school children and young people needing education to justify unsafe schools remaining open, if it is exposing them to the virus which they take back to their families and communities.  What is going to harm a child more, a few weeks out of education or the death of their parents, siblings or grandparents, that they involuntarily infected?  If education is open it has to be safe and the risks of aerosol transmission must be controlled.”(9)

1. A Better Way To Go: towards to a Zero COVID UK – 7 July 2020 Independent SAGE
2. Hazards Campaign and Independent SAGE call for no workers to return to workplaces unless Covid safety plans are in place – 2 September 2020, Hazards Campaign and Independent SAGE
3. The Hazards Campaign calls for the government to adopt immediately a zero-Covid19 policy– 31 July 2020, Hazards Campaign
4. No going back to work unless workers say it is safe!– 7 May 2020, Hazards Campaign
5. Deadly failures have placed millions of workers at unnecessary coronavirus exposure risk – 8 April 2020, Hazards Campaign
6. The UK Government response is like a car skidding uncontrollably towards a brick wall – 23 September 2020, Hazards Campaign
7. ‘We’ll be policed all the way to the factory gates’ – 30 September 2020, Hazards Campaign
8. Summary of the effectiveness and harms of different non-pharmaceutical interventions, SAGE minutes 21 st Sept 2020
9. Is two metre physical distancing enough? Aerosol transmission and other emerging issues – 14 September 2020, Hazards Campaign

Further Information

• Hazards magazine coronavirus hub
• Abdication:  HSE has been missing in action throughout the Covid-19 crisis – Hazards 151, 2020
• Laid bare: The scandal of expendable workers before, during and after Covid – Hazards 151, 2020
• Covid19 in the UK and occupational health and safety. Predictable but not inevitable failures  what can we do now, Professor Andrew Watterson
• Exposed: Workers need health, pay and job protection from all job risks, Hazards 149, 2020
• Hazards Campaign: Briefings and statements on Covid-19

Hazards Campaign Twitter: @hazardscampaign
Facebook: We didn’t vote to die at work
email:  info@hazardscampaign.org.uk

For further information contact:
Janet Newsham
janet@gmhazards.org.uk
07734317158

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and every year thousands of people don pink outfits and collect money for a variety of breast cancer charities.  But this doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. This session will highlight some of the preventable occupational risks to breast cancer and what we should be doing in our workplaces and trade unions to challenge those risks.

Join the Hazards Campaign Thursday Talk on Thursday 29 October with speakers:

Jane McArthur – Work and Prevention SSHRC, University of Windsor, Canada

Helen Lynn – Alliance for Cancer prevention , Health and Environment Researcher

Jane Stewart – TUC General Council, Unite NEC and Chair Womens Committee, Unite Convener at Unilever Port sunlight

To book a place and receive the link to the meeting please go visit the Eventbrite page

Hazards Campaign

website www.hazardscampaign.org.uk
twitter @hazardscampaign
facebook www.facebook.com/groups/123746101003963

If you need more information please email: janet@gmhazards.org.uk
or 07734 317 158

The Hazards Campaign is a UK-wide network of resource centres and campaigners. The Hazards Campaign supports those organising and campaigning for justice and safety at work.

If you would like to get more involved or make a donation to our organisation please email: janet@gmhazards.org.uk

Thursday Zoom Talk – 15th October,  6.00-7.30pm

The Challenges of Long-Covid – How we recognise it, public health and occupational health consequences, legal and workplace challenges.

Join the latest Hazards Campaign Thursday Zoom Talk with speakers including: …..

• Clare Rayner – retired Clinician and involved with many long-covid groups
• Professor Raymond Agius – Covid as an Occupational Illness
• Phil Liptrott – Thompsons Solicitors
• Paul Holleran –  NW GMB Health and Safety Officer

We have plenty to discuss and lots to campaign about  – especially on what we need to be doing in the workplace to support workers.

To book a place and receive the link to the meeting please go to  Eventbrite

For further information relevant to the speakers and subject:

• Briefing on employer and employees responsibilities on returning to work in the cake of coranovirus (Covid-19). no.7 
• GMB Coronavirus hub
• SOM COVID-19 summary update
• Hazards Campaign and Independent SAGE call for no workers to return to workplaces unless Covid safety plans are in place
• Joint Independent Sage and Hazards Campaign Charter and document

website www.hazardscampaign.org.uk
twitter @hazardscampaign
facebook www.facebook.com/groups/123746101003963

If you need more information please email: janet@gmhazards.org.uk
or 07734 317 158

The Hazards Campaign is a UK-wide network of resource centres and campaigners. The Hazards Campaign supports those organising and campaigning for justice and safety at work.

If you would like to get more involved or make a donation to our organisation please email: janet@gmhazards.org.uk

Hazards Campaign news release, 30 September 2020

The Government has introduced new Covid-19 penalties aimed at individuals, which it blames for the increased transmission rates.

The National Hazards Campaign Chair Janet Newsham said “At a time when money should be spent preventing the spread of infections in schools, care homes, hospitals, meat processing plants, offices etc. the Government has chosen to set aside £60m for police and local authorities to enforce the new laws.  However, when workers are inside their factories, offices and other premises, there is little money being spent on enforcing safe control of the transmission risks and ensuring their health, safety and welfare.  Again, it seems like workers health is being regarded as different to public health. ”

At the 29 September 2020 zoom conference ‘Who is regulating the Regulators?’ Janet said that “Workplaces are not being inspected and many reports made to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are being dealt with by phone calls to employers and with no physical inspection taking place.”

Employers are also failing in their legal duty to report work-related cases as a new report issued by Pirc found in the food sector (1).  There were just 47 notifications of Covid-19 workplace infections and no deaths were reported when the real number is at least 1,461 infections and 6 deaths in the food manufacturing sector.  But there are other sectors that are also suffering from spiralling infection rates including the health and social care sector, education and other high-risk employment.

A new report (2) by Professor Agius showed ‘many thousands’ of UK work-related cases and hundreds of deaths were being missed by the RIDDOR occupational accident and disease reporting system, backed up by a June warning from Hazards Magazine (3) of an ‘intelligence failure’ at the HSE, with the regulator ‘having little idea what was going on’.

Janet Newsham Hazards Campaign said “The Covid-safe charter that Independent Sage and Hazards Campaign produced (4) weeks ago, to ensure the safety and health of workers in all workplace settings has been ignored.   Rushing people back to unsafe workplaces at a time when transmission rates don’t even match the Governments own measurements for reopening society, never mind not following the science!  Instead they are blaming individuals rather than targeting the real culprits which are employers not controlling the risks.”

Within hours of opening schools, many were sending children back home to isolate.  Children were simply shooed back home and the stop, start education we feared began to happen.  Two weeks later, thousands of children and young people are back at home, staff infected, children infected, family members infected and the spiralling upwards of transmission rates, has hit our communities.  Their risks never controlled in their schools and education environments, which are of course also workplaces. (5)

The Governments demonising of young people at Universities is shameful.  Young people sent to live in shared flats with strangers from different communities (with different transmission rates) across the UK, where social distancing is impossible.  And the subsequent return of workers into non-essential workplaces was always going to be problematic on top of the workers who have continually worked throughout the pandemic.

The Hazards Campaign criticisms of the lack of enforcement and inadequate investigations into the cause of workplace clusters are public record. (6)   Public Health England (PHE), HSE and others have failed to ensure employers are controlling the risks for workers.  Leaving many infected, with long term ill health and some have sadly died. They have failed to investigate transmission risks, failed to enforce health and safety law and failed to hold employers to account for their negligence.  The TUC has recently polled workers (7) and have said that ‘many workplaces are still not taking adequate measures to protect employees from coronavirus’.

And this on the back of the chronic underfunding of the HSE and Local Authority (LA) enforcement bodies over decades, they are now facing the further threat and humiliation of privatisation of part of their roles.  A role that would place enforcement authority with compromised independence, and firmly in the hands of private sector.

Campaign Chair Janet Newsham continued: “If the transmission rates are to be reduced then we need health and safety law enforced and a Covid-19 safe workplace strategy in place, alongside a zero-Covid19 strategy that includes a high functioning and supportive test, track, trace, and isolate. If workplaces aren’t recognised as a source for transmission, then the UK transmission rates will continue to rise.  Policing of Covid-19 prevention, must not stop at the factory gates.”

1. Unreported deaths – A PIRC sector briefing: Food preparation, September 2020, Alice Martin, Pensions & Investment Research Consultants.
2. Covid-19: statutory means of scrutinizing workers’ deaths and disease, 21 September 2020, Occupational Medicine, R.M. Agius.
3. Abdication:  HSE has been missing in action throughout the Covid-19 crisis, Hazards 150, 2020.
4. The COVID-19 Safe Workplace Charter and briefing document on ending work lockdowns in GB, The Independent SAGE Report 10, 27 August 2020, The Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
5. Studies undermine Williamson’s ‘little evidence’ claim on school risks, 10 August 2020, Hazards Campaign.
6. We predicted an explosion in workplace Covid-19 outbreaks – two weeks later that’s exactly what we’ve got, 20 August 2020, Hazards Campaign
7. Many UK workplaces still not ‘Covid-Secure’, 16 September 2020, Risks 965, TUC.

Notes for Editors:
For more information, press only: W
Contact: Janet Newsham
Email: janet@gmhazards.org.uk

Tel: 07734317158 

www.hazardscampaign.org.uk

The Hazards Campaign is a UK-wide network of resource centres and campaigners. The Hazards Campaign supports those organising and campaigning for justice and safety at work.

The Hazards Campaign
c/o Greater Manchester Hazards Centre
Windrush Millennium Centre
70 Alexandra Road
Manchester,
M16 7WD
ENGLAND

website www.hazardscampaign.org.uk
twitter @hazardscampaign
facebook www.facebook.com/groups/123746101003963

Hazards Campaign – News Release,

22nd September 2020 (No embargo)

At this week’s Hazards Campaign Thursday zoom ‘Where are the sirens?’, Janet Newsham chair of the Hazards Campaign will say “‘Applying the brakes?’ This is like the horrific images of the tsunami relentlessly and effortlessly swamping the beach town properties engulfing everything and anyone in their way . Or a car skidding uncontrollably towards the brick wall with the inevitable deadly consequences.  Brakes applied too little too late.  Warning sirens were not pressed before the wave of death swamps the population.” (1)

Early in May the Hazards Campaign said ‘there is no conflict between economic recovery and health because a healthy economic recovery requires healthy workers and people’, but to achieve it then we warned there should be no easing of the lock-down until seven preconditions were met.(2)  These preconditions remain just as valid today.  This Government has learnt no lessons from the deaths, disabilities, and ill health it has failed to control.

Some individuals and workplaces have taken precautions over and above what has been announced by Government.  Whilst others following Government mixed messaging, have carried on their business and put lives at risk without any caution.  It has led to workplace, school and community clusters.  Clusters that have led to the deaths of workers and increased the infection rate in local communities.

Our Government has been the sheep dragged kicking and screaming towards measures that will save some lives, but their sights have been firmly and continue to be firmly on the target of keeping the economy going and the result will be devastating financially for many businesses who will see extended economic disruption as our communities are awash with the virus.

In June, the Hazards Campaign challenged the Government’s easing of conditions that workers would be safe to return to workplaces under.  When the Government reduced the 2m distance to 1m or hardly any physical distancing between workers, we challenged this based on the scientific evidence available.  It was clear that there needed to be a precautionary approach to physical distancing, as aerosols were a far greater transmission risk of spreading the virus, especially inside buildings. (3)  We also called on the Government to adopt a zero Covid-19 policy. (4)

‘Staying Alert! what a nonsense.  Our Government hasn’t been alert to any of the advice until much of it is too late.  They locked down too late, they didn’t lock down all non-essential businesses.  Too preoccupied with the economy they went on to release the lock down again too early, they forced children back to unsafe schools and then workers back to unsafe workplaces.  They have blamed young people and families for spreading the virus, when their messages of go back to the pub, eat out and return to public transport and unsafe workplaces should have been the real focus of concern and stringent action.’

At the beginning of August the Hazards Campaign warned about the risks in schools and that it would drive up Covid-19 cases if the Government ignored the outbreak risks. (5) Then at the end of August we again challenged the Governments failure to acknowledge and act on workplace cluster warnings by forcing children back to school so that parents could return to work and as a consequence workplace cluster outbreaks were increasing. (6)

The Hazards Campaign followed that up with a joint report with the scientist group Independent Sage and called for ‘No workers to return to workplaces unless Covid safety plans are in place’. (7)
All these warnings and predictions about what would happen if they were ignored are unfortunately being proved right.  The Government has chosen to carry on regardless.

As the science has firmly moved from better hygiene to aerosol risks, the Government has been silent, even complicit in their lack of instruction to workplaces to ensure that the transmission of the virus in aerosols is controlled via low occupation, better ventilation and face mask/PPE wearing.  While Independent Sage and Hazards Campaign document of three weeks ago said that workplaces (which include schools, pubs, cafes etc) all workplaces needed to be Covid-safe and certified before opening, the Government ignored such advice.

Throughout the pandemic the Hazards Campaign have argued that a precautionary approach was needed to ensure the control of the transmission of the virus, that the Government had to break the cycle of transmission with full lock down of non-essential business and that they needed to follow a Zero-Covid strategy.

‘We have proof now that we need that Zero-Covid strategy,  we need Covid-safe workplaces and we need a fresh Government with their eyes wide open to proper defence of the population and away from a knee jerked, back of the fag packet after a pint down the local pub analysis and inaction.’

Notes to editors:

• 1. Where are the sirens? Can the tsunami of work clusters be stopped?
  2. Hazards Campaign: We go back to work safely, or not at all
  3. The Hazards Campaign calls for the government to adopt immediately a zero-Covid19 policy
  4. The Hazards Campaign calls for the government to adopt immediately a zero-Covid19 policy
  5. Studies undermine Williamson’s ‘little evidence’ claim on school risks
  6. We predicted an explosion in workplace Covid-19 outbreaks – two weeks later that’s exactly what we’ve got
  7. News release: Hazards Campaign and Independent SAGE call for no workers to return to workplaces unless Covid safety plans are in place

  Further Information:

  • Hazards Campaign coronavirus hub: www.hazards.org/coronavirus
  • Professor Andrew Watterson Covid19 in the UK and occupational health and safety. Predictable but not inevitable failures  what can we do now: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340502136_COVID_19_in_the_UK_and_occupational_health_and_safety_-_predictable_but_not_inevitable_failures_what_can_we_do_now_updated
  • Hazards Magazine: http://www.hazards.org/index.htm  Exposed Coronavirus issue 149
  • Hazards Campaign: http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/ Briefings, statements on CV19
  • Hazards Campaign Twitter: @hazardscampaign
  • Facebook: We didn’t vote to die at work
  • email:  info@hazardscampaign.org.uk

  For further information contact:
  Janet Newsham
  janet@gmhazards.org.uk
  07734317158

  See: 23 September 2020, Hazards Campaign Thursday Zoom – Where are the Sirens?

We predicted an explosion in workplace outbreaks, as workers were forced back to work – two weeks later that is exactly what we’ve got

Hazards campaign news release, 20th August 2020 (No embargo)

The workplace is emerging as the new frontline for Covid-19 spread, after the UK government and health agencies ignored warnings on the dangers of a rush back to work, occupational health experts have warned.

Janet Newsham, the chair of the national Hazards Campaign says: ‘We’ve got an unprecedented abdication of responsibility by HSE, which has never before eschewed its enforcement responsibility this way, or denied oversight to protect workers in workplaces where deadly disease risks, carcinogens and major accident hazards can be encountered. They have been AWOL throughout the pandemic and as a result workers have died and many more have been left with long term serious ill health’.

The Hazards Campaign has raised concerns about the unsafe opening of workplaces, including schools. ‘While the community transmission is so high reopening of schools will massively increase contacts between potentially infected individuals and will lead to pressure for more people to return to workplaces, greatly increasing risks.’

Over the last four weeks, Public Health England (PHE) figures (1) show the ‘workplace’ has emerged as the second most common site of Covid-19 ‘situations/incidents’, trailing only care homes. PHE’s definition of workplaces does not include work-related Covid incidents in hospitals, schools or prisons, so under-estimates the real extent of occupationally-related cases.

Evidence elsewhere, including France (2) and Germany (3), show workplaces are the new frontline for virus spread. Without adequate protection, rights and oversight, we are going to give the pandemic a whole new lease of life and the economy will continue to be decimated. A recent report ‘COVID-19 clusters and outbreaks in occupational settings in the EU/EEA and the UK’ published on the 11th August, 2020 details some of the occupational outbreaks across Europe. (3)

The Hazards Campaign has been tracking workplace outbreaks and its dossier shows food production remains a major hotspot for outbreaks, but there is a clear indication that the problem is wider, with multiple clusters also occurring in factories, schools, hospitality and other sectors.

At the start of the outbreak we were promised a ‘Covid-Secure’ return to work. What we have got instead is government-driven stampede back into workplaces, without the necessary oversight or support for workers or for businesses. The Government are forcing children back into unsafe schools, so that parents can return to unsafe workplaces and the chaotic and irresponsible opening of pubs, clubs and gyms during a high transmission of a potentially fatal disease is madness. The Government must also ensure that all workers are able to access statutory sick pay and there is an extension of the furlough programme to restrict the transmission of the virus (4).

The Covid-19 workplace clusters that are now appearing all over the country, are being put down to individuals breaking the rules, but when that coincides with workplaces closing down, mass testing of workers and mass positive results of the same workers, then this is uncontrolled transmission of the virus in workplaces, especially where workers are working inside buildings with an aerosol risk of transmission. (5)

If our society is to open schools then the transmission must be low, and track, trace and isolate must be fully functioning at a high level of contact and all the risks in that workplace must be controlled at a precautionary level. The enforcement authorities must act now to ensure that employers can demonstrate that they are carrying out their health and safety legal duties. This cant be based on ‘suck it and see’, or on the body bags that pile up, where risks are not controlled. It has to be right first time, and it has to include the full control of all the known risks.

There is a lot more evidence to show the extent of transmission of the virus on surfaces, and by aerosols. (6) This means new ways of working, new facilities and more resources to keep work safe. It means working from home as far as possible, not using public transport unless essential, it means remote teaching and learning, it means utilising new and existing premises to spread people out, it means shift working and shift management, it means controlling and increasing ventilation, it means less people at a time in workplaces, it may mean more people working less hours or different hours and it means working with trade unions and safety representatives to identify and control all the risks.

We need a community, collective and carefully controlled response to stopping the transmission of the virus, so that we can eventually reduce the controls necessary, return to normal working and hopefully a vaccination is found.

Notes to editors

1. PHE Weekly Report, Week 33, released 14 August 2020
2. Workplaces – not parties – ‘the biggest source of coronavirus contagion in France’ The Local FR,  3rd August 2020
3. COVID-19 clusters and outbreaks in occupational settings in the EU/EEA and the UK, 11 August 2020,  European Centre for Diseases and Protection
4. Economic Aspects of the COVID-19 Crisis in the UK, The DELVE Initiative, 14 August 2020.
5. Recognizing and controlling airborne transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2 in indoor environments, Joseph G. Allen and Linsey C. Marr, Indoor Air, 19 June 2020.
6. KEEP YOUR DISTANCE: Is two metres too far or not far enough to protect from COVID-19 and who benefits and who loses if it is reduced ? Hazards Campaign, 22nd June 2020

Further information

• Hazards Campaign coronavirus hub
• We go back to work safely or not at all Hazards Campaign news release, 6 May 2020
• Covid19 in the UK and occupational health and safety. Predictable but not inevitable failures what can we do now: Professor Andrew Watterson, University of Stirling, April 2020
• Exposed, Hazards Magazine, Issue 149
•  Hazards Campaign: Briefings, statements on CV19
• Hazards Campaign Twitter: @hazardscampaign
• Hazards Campaign Facebook: We didn’t vote to die at work
• Hazards Campaign email: info@hazardscampaign.org.uk

Media enquiries

Janet Newsham
Tel: 07734 317 158

Hazards campaign news release, 11 August 2020 (No embargo)

A series of studies, including two in recent days from UK experts, discredit claims by education secretary Gavin Williamson that there is ‘little evidence’ of a Covid-19 transmission risk in schools, workplace safety advocates have warned.

The safe-to-return claim by Gavin Williamson is patently untrue and could drive an upturn in Covid-19 cases.

“The safe-to-return claim by Gavin Williamson is patently untrue and could drive an upturn in Covid-19 cases,” said Janet Newsham, the chair of the national Hazards Campaign. “The education secretary is either ignorant of or choosing to ignore considerable evidence of outbreak risks in schools.  He is also failing to acknowledge the detrimental consequences of a ‘stop-start’ disruption to schooling and the economy as local flare-ups continue.”

The campaigners point to a study¹ published on 24 July that concluded there is “evidence of robust spread of SARS-CoV-2 in high schools, and more limited spread in primary schools. Some countries with relatively large class sizes in primary schools (eg. Chile and Israel) reported sizeable outbreaks in some of those schools.” The paper, co-authored by Muge Cevik from the NHS Lothian Infection Service and the University of St Andrews, noted “these reports suggest that classroom crowding and other factors related to social distancing in classrooms/schools may play a role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in primary schools. Those findings should have implications for school openings in different age groups of children, and they suggest the need to better protect adults over the age of 60 during the community spread of SARS-CoV-2.”

A second study² published on 3 August by scientists from University College London (UCL) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found current testing and contact tracing levels are not sufficient to prevent a second wave of coronavirus after schools reopen. The researchers, who found the track-trace-isolate system was not up to the task, warned: “Without sufficient coverage of a test-trace-isolate strategy the UK risks a serious second epidemic peak either in December or February.”

The Hazards Campaign is also concerned the move will coincide with a relaxation of lockdown rules and government pressure for a reduction in working from home. “The government is failing to take adequate account of a simultaneous wider return to work, which our tracking of UK workplace clusters indicates could be the focus for increasing local outbreaks in offices, factories and other workplaces,” Newsham said. “We have the double jeopardy of return to schools without the essential trace-trace-isolate system in place and a return to work with oversight by workplace safety regulators at a virtual standstill.”

Newsham concluded: “Education in the UK is being damaged by neglected and dangerous infrastructure, poorly resourced classrooms and education staff stressed-out through understaffing and overwork,” said Newsham. “Crowding kids back into these schools is a unnecessary gamble and could be counterproductive, setting back Covid-19 prevent efforts and lead to further shutdowns.”

Latest Public Health England figures³ show workplace cases are an increasing proportion of overall Covid-19 infections and the great majority of cases are in working age people.

Notes to editors

Hazards Campaign coronavirus hub: www.hazards.org/coronavirus

1. Edward Goldstein, Marc Lipsitch, Muge Cevik, On the effect of age on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in households, schools and the community, medRxiv preprint, 24 July 2020. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.19.20157362
2. Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths and others, Determining the optimal strategy for reopening schools, the impact of test and trace interventions, and the risk of occurrence of a second COVID-19 epidemic wave in the UK: a modelling study, Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, Online first 3 August 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(20)30250-9.
3. Weekly Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Surveillance Report, Week 32, PHE, 7 August 2020