Dozens of illegal boat migrants have been arriving in England and receiving coronavirus tests, according to reports — while many healthcare workers were being refused.
“In line with Public Health England guidance, Border Force and all operational staff have the relevant Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) available to them,” said a Home Office spokesman, in comments reported by the Daily Mail.
“[The migrants] were taken on board the cutters and brought to Dover where they received further medical assessment, which will include looking for the symptoms of coronavirus.”
Despite France being a safe, first world country — with several more safe countries standing between it and trouble spots such as Syria and Libya — migrants who cross the Channel to Britain are not turned back once they reach Britain’s shores, of even just Britain’s territorial waters.
They are instead allowed to claim asylum or brought ashore in order to claim asylum, in line with European Union regulations which Britain still has to follow. Very few are deported back to France, in percentage terms.
The boat migrants situation unfolded as British healthcare workers were complaining that they were not being tested for Covid-19 despite experiencing symptoms after close contact with the Chinese virus.
Consultant cardiologist Mark Gallagher told the Guardian he was confident he had the coronavirus after contact with a woman who “almost certainly” contracted it in his hospital and subsequently died from it — but that he was having to pay a private clinic for a test.
“Approximately 50 nurses dealt with her and many doctors. None has been tested. All are still at work,” he said.
The Tory-supporting Telegraph received similar complaints from insiders, described as “not reflexive ideological enemies of the Tories… [but] Telegraph readers who fear that a terrible mistake is being made” — and that the United Kingdom is heading for “catastrophe”.
“I will be arriving in my suit and tie tomorrow with nothing to prevent me catching [the virus], and working in an operating theatre that a Covid patient was in on Friday, nobody aware that he had it, and the staff members I will be working with, will all have been in contact with that patient,” said one.
“So, the NHS is just about to explode in terms of absences, simultaneously with the patient explosion,” he warned.