Category: #ukreport

As the first wave of coronavirus swept across Europe earlier this year, one region of the continent remained relatively untouched by the global pandemic.

Central Europe spends less on healthcare than its western neighbours yet reported significantly lower infections rates after clamping down “hard and fast” to prevent outbreaks, says Politico. Slovakia was even cited alongside New Zealand as a nation setting an example for the rest of the world to follow.

But now, as a second wave threatens Europe, the continent’s central countries are seeing “a huge surge in infections” that threatens “to overwhelm the medical systems of many of the EU’s poorer member countries”, the news site reports.

Czech the numbers

Another country previously hailed as a success story in the battle against Covid, the Czech Republic now has the highest rate of infections in the EU, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Infection rates among the nation’s 10.9 million-strong population lingered at around 200 new cases a day through the summer, but began rising in September and hit a record high of 8,618 cases on Friday.

The Czech Republic has now “surpassed a previous worst-case scenario advanced by the health minister, Roman Prymula, an epidemiologist who was appointed last month with a brief to combat soaring infection rates”, The Guardian reports.

Prymula “said when he took office that without tougher measures, numbers could reach between 6,000 and 8,000 a day, which would would be beyond the health system’s capacity to cope”, the newspaper adds.

Neighbouring countries are also reporting sudden rises in Covid cases.

ECDC figures show that the number of daily new cases in Slovakia is now ten times higher than in the summer, while Poland recorded a national record of 5,300 new cases on Saturday. Hungary has gone from only nine cases at the start of August to 1,374 on Saturday, while Romania’s average daily tally has tripled from the summer to 3,517 on Friday.

Death rates are also rising, and hospitalisations and demand for respirators are increasing significantly too – creating major problems in a region where, with the exception of the Czech Republic, “healthcare spending, and the number of doctors and nurses, is well below levels in Western Europe”, Politico reports.

Extreme measures

When the coronavirus pandemic first began, back in early spring, many central European countries locked down quickly and shut their borders to avoid the spread of the virus.

The Czech authorities imposed a nationwide lockdown on 15 March, when the nation had reported just 293 cases, and made mask-wearing in public mandatory three days later.

This swift response was praised by commentators worldwide including University of Glasgow academics Jan Culik, a senior lecturer in Czech studies, and Mirna Solic, a lecturer in modern languages and cultures.

In an article on The Conversation in June, the pair noted that while the New Zealand authorities had been lauded for their quick intervention, testing was also “freely available from the very beginning, international travel suspended, and travellers requested to self-isolate for 14 days” in the Czech Republic and other Central European countries.

However, as in the UK, the reopening of schools and slow relaxation of restrictions has triggered an upsurge in infections across the central nations.

“This isn’t looking good,” Konstanty Szuldrzynski, a senior doctor at the University Hospital in the Polish city of Krakow, told Politico. “We still have relatively low death rates, but we do have a problem.

“If this starts to grow, we have no tool to handle this.”

Return to lockdown

As over-stretched medical services struggle to cope, many nations in the region are considering the reintroduction of strict measures to curb the spread.

On Sunday, as Boris Johnson prepared to outline his new plan for the UK, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis introduced “orders to shut pubs at 8pm, limits on restaurant service to four patrons per table, and closing gyms, swimming pools and zoos”, The Guardian reports.

And in Hungary, “authorities have indicated over the past days that they are working to boost testing capacity”, although “it remains unclear how many extra tests will be made available”, adds Politico.

The biggest strain for the central EU nations is a shortage of medical staff. Poland has only 237 doctors per 100,000 people, the lowest level in the EU, while Hungary has 338 and Slovakia has 352, according to Eurostat.

By contrast, Germany has 431, while Italy – which was battered by its first Covid-19 wave – has 398.

“Our system was on the edge of effectiveness even before the pandemic,” Polish medic Szuldrzynski told Politico. “If we devote all of our resources and time to coronavirus, an even bigger problem is that the system will stop curing all the other people.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Clare Foges in The Times

on the rise of quiet vax-sceptics

There are more vaccine sceptics than we think

“We are well acquainted with the anti-vaxxer movement. We have seen their protests in Trafalgar Square, the crackpots chanting ‘Freedom from tyranny!’ and wearing T-shirts bearing 5G conspiracy theories. My concern is that the focus on this noisy but relatively small group has led us to a kind of complacency, because if this rabble of online warriors constituted the total resistance to a vaccine, well, so what?… And so, dismissing the lunatic fringe, we can lazily believe that vaccine refusal is a niche, extreme thing that won’t affect take-up in any meaningful way. But my growing impression is that scepticism about this vaccine is rather widespread.”

2. Benjamin Zephaniah in The Guardian

on the importance of Black History Month

Black people will not be respected until our history is respected

“I wish we didn’t need a Black History Month. But we really do… We need Black History Month now more than ever before. If we really want to understand what’s happening in the world, and change it for the better, we must confront the past and learn from the past. Good or bad. We owe it to ourselves, and future generations. Now, go and listen to some reggae. Go on. Turn up the bass.”

3. Luke Pollard in The Independent

on banning trophy hunting

Trophy hunting is a colonial hangover that should be consigned to the history books

“As we celebrated the many magnificent creatures that walk our earth on World Animal Day on 4 October, an extinction crisis is in our midst. The truth is, in a few years’ time there might not be as many animals to celebrate. A wild lion hunting a gazelle or an African elephant enjoying a mud bath might be something we only see in wildlife documentaries past. Animal exploitation, loss of habitat and the climate emergency have all played their part. Yet even now it is still legal for trophy hunters to travel around the world and kill some of our most iconic species.”

4. Christopher Orr in The Atlantic

on the UK’s new golden age of police dramas

Why British Police Shows Are Better

“The British detective story is enjoying a golden age unparalleled since the days of Agatha Christie or perhaps even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… While American viewers shake off the hangover from our long bender of forensic TV franchises (did I only imagine Law & Order: Special Veterinary Unit and CSI: Wichita?), Britain has been doing a booming export business in tidy, ruminative detective series: Broadchurch, Happy Valley, Shetland, Unforgotten, River, Vera, The Loch, Hinterland, and more. Reliable viewership numbers are hard to come by, but if you begin questioning friends and family, before long you’re likely to discover a semi-fanatical devotee of the genre among them.”

5. Yanzhong Huang in the New York Times

on souring Sino-US relations

When the U.S. and China Fight, It Is the Environment That Suffers

“President Trump likes to cast U.S.-China relations as a zero-sum game: During the 2015 presidential campaign he said, ‘I beat the people from China. I win against China. You can win against China if you’re smart.’ But when it comes to environmental protection, decoupling is a lose-lose proposition for both countries.”

Jill Biden is set to visit Texas this week as part of a major push by her husband’s party to win the traditionally Republican-voting state in the presidential election.

The would-be first lady is set to make stops in Houston, Dallas and El Paso on Tuesday, the first day of early voting, as the Democrats look to do the unthinkable and flip the state from red to blue.

Joe Biden’s campaign is targeting Texas with an advertising blitz reportedly worth $6m (£4.6m) – “the biggest investment from a Democratic presidential nominee in the last 25 years” in the state, according to The Texas Tribune.

The Lincoln Project – a group led by former Republican strategists now working to defeat Trump – has also launched a $1m (£768,000) pro-Biden digital ad campaign in the state.

Doug Emhoff, the husband of Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris, has joined the Texas campaigning push too, visiting Edinburg, San Antonio and Dallas last week, as polls showed that the battle for the Lone Star state was looking unusually close.

Donald Trump has insisted the Republicans have nothing to worry, however. In a tweet on Friday, the incumbent said: “Biden is against Oil, Guns and Religion, a very bad combination to be fighting in the Great State of Texas. We are Winning Big, in the Real Polls, all over the Country!!! NOVEMBER 3rd. VOTE!!!”

What are the numbers saying?

Though his claim to be ahead nationally is incorrect, Trump does currently lead in Texas. The president commands 50% of the state’s likely voters to Biden’s 45%, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. A Yougov poll from 8 October also shows Trump ahead by 5%.

Some analysts see Texans’ voting intentions as an indication of their negative attitude towards Trump, rather than a clear endorsement of Biden.

In the University of Texas poll, 55% of respondents who identified as Democrats said they were voting for Biden because they want him to be president, while 45% said he was their choice simply because they don’t want his rival to remain in the White House.

By contrast, a vast majority of Trump’s supporters – 81% – said they want him as president, while 19% said their main motivation was to stop Barack Obama’s former vice president from securing the top job.

“What it really shows you is just how much of this is about Trump,” said Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the university and co-director of the poll. “The race is a marker for attitudes towards Trump. It really is a referendum.”

Kind of blue?

Democrats have already made great strides in Texas since Trump first assumed the presidency.

In 2014, Democratic nominee Wendy Davis lost her bid for governor to Republican Greg Abbott by 20 points. But just four years later, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke mounted an “insurgent campaign” against Senator Ted Cruz, losing by only 2.5 points – “an implausible jump” forward in terms of support, says The Texas Tribune‘s Washington bureau chief Abby Livingston.

O’Rourke went on to become a candidate in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, before dropping out and throwing his support behind Biden.

In a recent op-ed for The Washington Post, O’Rourke and Tory Gavito, president and co-founder of the progressive donor network Way to Win, urged Biden to aggressively fight for and win the state.

“Democrats have historically failed to invest in Texas, despite the size of this prize, because they believed the door is closed to Democratic presidential candidates,” they wrote.

“But, like many things in 2020, this year is different – Biden has his foot in the door and needs to kick it open for a quick end to the election.”

A total of 2,000 contact tracer roles has been slashed from the NHS Track and Trace service in recent weeks despite growing pressure on the system amid rising infection rates, Whitehall sources have revealed.

The Department of Health last night “said the move was about allocating more roles to regional teams to work with councils following criticism that the centrally run system was failing to tackle local outbreaks”, the Daily Mail reports. But MPs told the newspaper there was “no evidence” that resources are being redeployed locally.

Former culture minister Ben Bradshaw, the Labour MP for Exeter, said that “it has been clear for a long time that the tracing element of test and trace is in collapse”.

The tracer role cuts come after a further 6,000 Test and Trace staff were axed in August.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly said that effective testing and tracing is vital in tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

That message was echoed by Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, in an article published in The Guardian on Saturday.

The “most important” tool to bringing infection rates under control is “a robust system for testing, tracing and isolating, where test results are returned within 24 hours, at least 80% of people’s contacts are reached and there is high adherence to a rule of 14 days’ isolation for those exposed to the virus”, Sridhar wrote.

Last week, just 69% of close contacts of people in the UK who tested positive were reached – the lowest rate since test and trace launched.

The UK yesterday reported 12,872 new Covid cases, and 65 related deaths. The total official death tally for the nation now stands at 42,915, according to latest figures.

Newly published polling results reveal that just 20% of the public think the current test and trace system is working. The survey of 3,000 people for Politics Home last week found that 62% did not think the test and trace system is effective, while the remaining 18% were undecided.

It was revealed at the weekend that two of England’s biggest football clubs are behind plans to radically reform the Premier League.

In a “world exclusive” The Daily Telegraph broke the news that Liverpool and Manchester United are proposing the “biggest changes to English football in a generation” and an “extraordinary overhaul” of the country’s top division.

A document titled “Revitalisation”, which was seen by the Telegraph, has been authored by Liverpool’s American ownership Fenway Sports Group with support from Man Utd.

“Project Big Picture” would reshape the finances of the game, following the impact of Covid-19, meanwhile the Premier League would be reduced to 18 teams and controlling power put in the hands of the biggest clubs.

In reaction to the story, the big clubs have been called out for their “power grab” attempt and Premier League bosses and the UK government have also spoken out against the plans.

What is Project Big Picture?

Proposals include reducing the Premier League from 20 to 18 teams, increasing funding for the English Football League (EFL) and axing the League Cup and Community Shield.

Another major talking point is for the big clubs to “gain control over the running of the top flight in return for redistributing greater funding down the football pyramid”, The Guardian reports. The nine longest-serving top-flight clubs would be given preferential votes under the new proposals.

The Telegraph says that the remarkable set of proposals, which will “send shockwaves through the game”, will see 25% of the Premier League’s annual revenue go to the EFL clubs with £250m paid up front to see it through the current crisis. There would also be a gift of £100m to sustain the Football Association.

While the Premier League would be reduced to 18 clubs, the Championship, League One and League Two would each retain 24 teams. The bottom two sides in the Premier League would be relegated automatically and the 16th-placed team would join the Championship play-offs.

Who is backing the plans?

No other clubs are yet on the record supporting the proposals created by Liverpool and Man Utd, BBC Sport reports. But “crucially” it has been approved by the EFL, says the Guardian.

Current EFL boss Rick Parry, who was the original Premier League CEO and a former chief executive of Liverpool, has publicly endorsed the project and calls it a “great idea”.

Parry said: “This is two of our great clubs showing leadership and exercising responsibility. The message from Liverpool and Manchester United is that they do genuinely care about the pyramid.

“The Premier League could have come up with a plan like this at any time. How long has it taken to get a rescue package? Months. It was May when the government was saying we need the Premier League to step up to the plate. What’s wrong with us talking about a plan that is demonstrably in the best interest of the pyramid and our clubs? We genuinely think that this is in the best interests of the game as a whole.”

Who is against it?

The Premier League says the proposed plans could have a “damaging impact”.

A statement read: “Football has many stakeholders, therefore this work should be carried out through the proper channels enabling all clubs and stakeholders the opportunity to contribute. In the Premier League’s view, a number of the individual proposals in the plan published could have a damaging impact on the whole game and we are disappointed to see that Rick Parry, chair of the EFL, has given his on-the-record support.

“The Premier League has been working in good faith with its clubs and the EFL to seek a resolution to the requirement for Covid-19 rescue funding. This work will continue.”

Meanwhile, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it was “surprised and disappointed” by “backroom deals being cooked up”, the BBC reports.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden told BBC Breakfast: “Now is not the right time. The challenge facing football is ensuring particularly the EFL has the resources to enable its clubs to survive. This deal does not command support throughout the Premier League at all.

“There are the resources there. I have to say that if they can’t get together and work together to sort this out, we will have to return to what we promised in our manifesto, which is a fan-led review of football governance because I think many fans will be concerned about what they are reading today.”

How the football media reacted

Project Big Picture dominates today’s newspaper back pages. The Guardian says football is “at war” with the big clubs’ plan to reshape the game sparking Premier League “anger”. The Daily Star says it’s “revolting” and the project has caused a “big stink” while The Times reports the “fury” at the plans.

In the Daily Mail Martin Samuel says Liverpool and United’s Project Big Picture is “nothing but a disgusting power grab”.

He wrote: “This is about six clubs controlling the wealth and seizing the power, right down to deciding who gets into their competition. This is about closed shop protectionism that will end the Premier League as a vibrant competition. This is about getting your round in with another man’s money.

“Project Big Picture? Far from saving our game, all it would do is reduce. Reduce what makes football fun. Reduce its unpredictability, reduce the excitement, reduce the chances for Wolves or Leicester or Aston Villa. Reduce the hope of a change of ownership at Newcastle. Reduce your chances of promotion. Reduce your hopes of success if you get there. Reduce, reduce, reduce.”

The Telegraph‘s chief football correspondent Jason Burt agrees that the “brazen power grab” is a “hostile takeover spun as a rescue package”. He said: “We need to be clear this plan is not what it seems and would surrender control of English football to six clubs and empower them as a cartel.”