Motion #07
SOC Note: Per the note at A02 above, the effect of accepting A02 (subject to any amendments) will be to ratify the text of this motion, given below, as an Interim Policy Position statement per section 14(viii) of the Constitution.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been more than 770 million reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection globally. The true number is likely considerably higher. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted, and continues to put at risk, people of colour, people living in poverty, those in insecure employment, clinically vulnerable people and their families, families living in crowded or intergenerational households, disabled people and people living with mental illness, as well as teachers, NHS staff and other frontline workers.
Long-COVID is a complex physical disease that is disproportionately affecting younger age groups and can cause severe, life-changing disability. It encompasses a range of conditions including cardiovascular complications, neurological damage and new onset post-COVID type-1 diabetes, as well as more classical post-viral syndrome symptoms including chronic fatigue. An estimated 1.9 million people in the UK are currently suffering from Long-COVID, including 62 thousand children, according to the UK Office for National Statistics.
School absences due to repeated infections and chronic illness are impacting children’s learning and life-chances. Unprecedented workplace absence levels are impacting productivity, exacerbating staff shortages and increasing pressures on staff needing to cover for absent colleagues. Far from protecting our economy, failing to combat this deadly and disabling disease is causing substantial economic damage. It is harming people’s health and wellbeing and creating unsustainable pressures on health and social care systems.
Progressive parties should be leading the way in calling for urgent action to address this ongoing public health emergency. The Green Party will implement known, effective measures to control transmission and protect our families, our communities and our economy.
Our policies will encapsulate a “Swiss Cheese” approach, establishing multiple layers of effective risk mitigation to protect individuals and society from the potentially devastating impacts of severe acute COVID-19 and/or Long-COVID on lives, livelihoods and on the wider economy.
Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions
Clean Indoor Air
The Green Party believe that everyone has a right to breathe clean air. We will ensure that systems are put in place to deliver clean, HEPA filtered, indoor air and/or ventilation standards appropriate to control transmission of airborne infections, in health, social care and educational settings, workplaces and indoor community and leisure facilities.
Testing and Isolation
The Green Party will reintroduce universal free lateral flow device rapid antigen testing for COVID-19, to ensure that any outbreak of the disease is quickly detected, traced and contained.
Anyone with symptoms of infectious disease, or testing positive for COVID-19 will be required to isolate. Where COVID-19 infection is confirmed, isolation will be required until they have tested negative for two consecutive days.
Comprehensive support will be provided to those required to isolate, or to care for dependants who are required to isolate, including the opportunity to work or learn from home if well enough and able to do so.
Public Health Campaigns
Through a clear, evidence-based public health campaign, The Green Party will encourage the use of filtering facemasks, appropriate to airborne infectious disease control, in any poorly ventilated or crowded indoor spaces including on all public transport.
The Green Party will ensure that there is openness and transparency about the risks and benefits associated with vaccines, that the risk/benefit analysis is continuously updated in response to emerging evidence, and that this information is communicated to the public through a clear, evidence-based public health campaign.
Vaccination
The Green Party will adopt a “vaccines-plus strategy”: a multi-layered approach to mitigating risks from severe acute COVID-19 and Long-COVID, including non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce exposure to infection as well as comprehensive all-age vaccination and booster programmes to protect individuals from severe disease and to generate and sustain population immunity.
Our policies will protect children by ensuring that in future their exposure to SARS-CoV-2 will be greatly reduced through non-pharmaceutical interventions. Subject to recommendation by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), children will be further protected through vaccination with safe, ideally nasally administered, vaccines appropriate to current variants.
The risks of Long-COVID in children and young people as well as working aged adults are well established, as is the protective role of vaccines against Long-COVID in adults. In light of emerging evidence that vaccines similarly protect children from Long-COVID, we will commission the JCVI to re-evaluate the risks and benefits of extending and re-establishing COVID-19 vaccine catch-up and booster programmes for younger age groups.
Specifically, in light of the impressive safety record of paediatric vaccines, we would commission the JCVI to re-evaluate the risks and benefits of re-establishing vaccination for children aged 5 to 11.
Furthermore, in light of increasing evidence on risks to infants and children under 5 from severe acute COVID-19 and Long-COVID, and established evidence that children are better protected where their first exposure is to a vaccine rather than to infection, we would task JCVI with considering the risks and benefits of implementing a pre-school vaccination programme followed by regular updated boosters for this age-group.
Schools
The Green Party will ensure that our policies on clean indoor air and ventilation, and on testing and isolation are implemented in all schools and other educational settings.
All school staff will receive professional development training on maintaining an infection-resilient environment in schools. Parents and Guardians will receive clear, scientifically sound communications to inform them about the risks of COVID-19 and Long-COVID, as well as measures they can take, and encourage their children to take, to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Clear, science-based age-appropriate health education will be provided for all pupils.
Our policies will reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and mitigate the risks of severe acute COVID-19 and Long-COVID, providing protection for all pupils and staff as well as ensuring that clinically vulnerable pupils are able to access education safely, and making schools a safe working environment for clinically vulnerable school staff.
Our policies will ensure that schools no longer play a key role in the transmission of infectious diseases. This will reduce school absences by breaking the cycle of repeated infection and sickness.
Workplaces
The Green Party will ensure that all indoor workplaces have in place measures to mitigate risks from airborne infections and pollutants, to ensure that employers’ duty of care towards their employees is discharged and workers’ rights to a safe and healthy working environment are respected.
Our policies on clean indoor air and ventilation standards, and on testing and isolation will be implemented in all workplaces.
Until workplaces are compliant with clean indoor air and ventilation standards, employers will be required to assess workplace infection risks, and implement risk mitigation measures where necessary to protect their employees and enable clinically vulnerable staff to access a safe working environment.
Employers will be required to encourage and support working from home where possible. Where this is impracticable, employers will be required to provide respirator-grade masks suitable for airborne infectious disease control for use by employees, where necessary to protect them from risk of severe acute COVID-19 and Long-COVID.
Hospitals and Other Health and Social Care Settings
The Green Party will ensure that all hospitals and other health and social care settings have in place suitable measures to mitigate risks to staff and patients from airborne infections.
Our policies on clean air and ventilation standards and on testing and isolation will be implemented in all hospitals and other health and social care settings.
Health and social care workers will be required to test regularly for COVID-19. Our policies on isolation and support will be implemented across health and social care, to protect colleagues and patients.
All patients will be tested for COVID-19 on admission to hospital. Any patient testing positive will be accommodated and cared for separately to other patients to mitigate risks of hospital acquired infection, which has been shown to lead to worse health outcomes and can be life-threatening to vulnerable patients.
Until our policy on clean indoor air and ventilation standards has been implemented across all hospital clinical and communal areas, respirator-grade masks suitable for airborne infection control will be mandated for all hospital staff.
Once our policy on clean air and ventilation standards has been implemented, respirator-grade mask mandates will remain in place for staff caring for patients testing positive or where there is high clinical suspicion of an airborne infection, and for staff in patient-facing roles involving immunocompromised or otherwise clinically vulnerable patients.
Patients have a right to safe medical care. All patients will retain the right to request that their healthcare provider wear a respirator-grade mask when attending to them. Such requests will be honoured unless there are very good medical reasons not to do so.
We will introduce threshold prevalence levels that would trigger moving to enhanced measures in hospitals and healthcare settings. In addition, identification of any new “variant of concern” with a significant growth advantage will trigger precautionary enhanced measures. Such measures shall include reintroducing mandatory respirator use in all clinical areas and patient-facing roles, to protect staff and patients.
We are mindful of the extreme, relentless pressures on our health and social care systems and on staff operating under current unsustainable conditions. We are confident that Green reforms on the social determinants of ill-health and health inequalities will substantially relieve this burden. We are committed to fair remuneration and safe, healthy working conditions for all health and social care workers, and to the principle of comprehensive, free healthcare provision for all. We will restore NHS capacity to pre-austerity levels.
Research
The Green Party will support research into improved vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and improved therapeutics for SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 and Long-COVID. We will appoint a Long-COVID Research Taskforce to set out Long-COVID Research priorities for the UK.
COVID-19 remains a notifiable disease. The Green Party will provide for free lateral-flow device testing and comprehensive data collection consistent with this designation. Data collected will form the basis of statistical, prospective, and retrospective clinical and transformational research to inform improvements in public health policy and clinical practice, to better mitigate risks and to better treat and manage disease.
The Green Party recognises Long-COVID as a complex physical disease that can be extremely debilitating and cause severe, life-changing disability. We will support and fund urgent research into treatment of Long-COVID on this basis. We will ensure that patients feel listened to, heard, and valued. Research and care systems will be co-produced with patients and the Research Taskforce, as well as expert scientific and other public advisors.
Background
SOC Note: The background for this motion is located at Appendix 4
Last updated on 2024-09-08 at 15:20