Widespread testing is crucial to controlling the spread of the coronavirus epidemic because it allows those who are infected to self-isolate while helping identify hot spots and trace those who are infected.
“When you land in Rome there is a swift and well organised Covid test with the result given in 30 minutes.” Richard E Grant
Here in the UK some people have made round trips of more than four hours and even in England’s worst-hit coronavirus hotspots people reported being unable to get a test.
In Bolton, Cath Dodds, whose young daughter has a chronic lung condition and asthma, and who developed a cough and a temperature, was forced to make a 240-mile round trip for a test after three days of trying to get one locally.
In Yorkshire. Gavin Kaps, a photographer who had a cough, no sense of smell or taste, a blocked nose and fatigue, was unable to book a test anywhere. “There were literally no options,” he said, so he went direct to a testing centre. “I was asked if I had an appointment and informed that the government had said they couldn’t accept people without appointments.”
Meanwhile Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “It’s incumbent on all of us to take a responsible approach and tell our constituents that tests are available in large numbers and the average distance travelled is 5.8 miles … And people should take this seriously and not game the system.”
What’s going on? Covid-19 is allowing for the escalting takeover of the NHS by the privateers is what’s going on.
Here in the UK testing has been sub-contracted to private companies such as Serco, G4S, Capita and Deloitte. They have won significant work on providing Covid testing, and have been awarded £1.3bn of NHS work in the last eight months .
Serco secured contracts worth £157m between February 1 and September 7, 2020, including a job mobilising 10,500 contact tracers for the NHS Test and Trace programme.
In the five years before the pandemic, share prices of these companies had underperformed and so Covid-19 has been a life-saver for them, if you will pardon the pun. Serco said it had won enough Covid-19 response work to offset “the significant negative impact of the pandemic in other parts of our business”. Readers will be relieved to know that by August, Serco had offset losses with a range of government contracts both in the UK and overseas, much of it focused on health ‘care’.
Serco are not alone in their financial ‘relief’. Capita, ‘won’ two awards worth £34m, and the security firm G4S a contract worth £9m.
It's a small matter, but Serco had to apologise after breaching data protection rules on its test-and-trace contract and was fined £1 million for failures on another government contract. The company has received larger fines in the past, notably more than £19m as part of a settlement with the Serious Fraud Office over failures in electronic tagging dating back to 2010.
This latest fine does not appear to have hampered Serco’s ability to win other government contracts. Alongside the test-and-trace contract, it secured an £800m prisoner custody contract and a £200m contract to manage immigration removal centres.
Most Covid-19 contracts have been awarded without a competitive tendering process under emergency procurement measures that were put in place in March.
The government is using the Coronavirus epidemic, to siphon billions of pounds into the pockets of friends who have no experience in the field of public health. Amongst them, a rodent infestation company pocketing a multi-million pound award to get in on the lucrative Coronavirus ‘market’.
Oh and The junior health minister, Edward Argar, is a former Serco lobbyist and Serco’s chief executive is Rupert Soames, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill and brother of Tory MP, Sir Nicholas Soames.
I have personal experience of Serco’s leading role in the privatisation of the NHS. When I was a patient at St Barts Hospital in 2018, I wrote that Serco’s employees, loving, gentle and caring health workers, once worked directly for the NHS, but as Serco employees, were earning £8 per hour and hadn’t seen a pay rise for ten years.
“I love the idea that the military is listed alongside healthcare and 'other citizen services' by SERCO. Also nice to know that the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs receive the same food services as we get in this hospital. I wonder if they have the same problem – a shortage of small spoons. In the Scrubs they may be being put to use tunnelling their escapes and probably don't ask why there is a shortage. There was no answer for me when I asked this question. Breakfast was tepid tea or coffee, cereal or porridge and toast. As I bite into the cold, spongy “toast” I could imagine Serco executives meeting to discuss how to cut back their costs to increase their profits. 'Let's start with breakfast'.”
In the intervening years things have only got worse. I look forward to the day when we put a Serco prisoner van to good use and take their CEO to prison for profiting off the suffering of the people.
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