As we suspected, the first report of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has shown how successive governments displayed a “criminally negligent” attitude towards protecting disabled people and other groups at risk from pandemics.
Disabled people’s organisations, speaking to Disability News Service (DNS) said this week that it was no surprise that the report concludes that years of pre-pandemic planning exercises had failed to take enough account of people with pre-existing health conditions, those living in deprivation, and those from minority ethnic communities.
The report says that emergency planning “generally failed to account sufficiently for the pre-existing health and societal inequalities and deprivation in society”.
And it says there was a failure to “appreciate the full extent” of the impact of government measures and long-term risks from the Covid pandemic on minority ethnic communities and those with “poor health or other vulnerabilities”.
It concludes: “When the pandemic struck, many of those who suffered and many of those who died were already vulnerable.
“The evidence from several voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations was that both the disease and the response to the emergency had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable people.”
The report says it will be “critical” now to “identify which groups of vulnerable people are likely to be hardest hit by a pandemic and the reasons why”.
You can read the full story in DNS.
Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software
Three people are sat at a large table on which is a sign that reads ‘COVID Enquiry’. They are each holding up a placard that reads consecutively: ‘Vulnerable People failed’ and ‘Criminally negligent’ and ‘Total Government Failure’. On the floor is a copy of Disability News Service (DNS) which has the headline: “Report from COVID 19 enquiry that governments failed with their emergency planning”.
Crippen Cartoons 