THE whirlwind of devastating news is blowing away all illusions that the virus is under control and that we will soon be able to return to normal.  

The government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said that “we don’t have this under control at the moment.”

A series of partial restrictions and the absence of a fully effective trace, track and isolate system is not going to bring that about.  

Instead, we need a series of policies whose aim is to crush the virus, as has been achieved elsewhere. This is a zero-Covid strategy.

Otherwise the outlook is for a rising death toll, further economic damage, terrible knock-on effects on public health, enormous damage to the education of our young people, and lives ruined.

The latest news that there has been an outbreak of the virus in the White House demonstrates that ignorance and bombast are no defence against Covid-19.  

I wish no-one ill and hope there is a full recovery by Donald and Melania Trump and all the staff who are affected.  

But it should be a stark warning that the virus is very serious, even for people who refuse to take it seriously.

Of course, very few people are privileged enough to have daily testing in their workplace and an on-call medical team.  

The reality for most people was brought home by the shocking news that 20,000 Amazon workers had contracted the virus.  

The truth is that lower-paid workers and poorer communities are much more likely to contract the virus.

So combatting its spread is a class issue. It is also an issue of race. One recent report points to a resumption of the disproportionate impact on black and Asian people in this country, who account for one-quarter of all those hospitalised in the recent upsurge.  

As hospital wards are now being cleared to make way for the expected rise in Covid-19 patients, the government must put in place all the necessary safeguards against a further wave of deaths in our care homes.  

We should never forget that well over half of all deaths from the virus in this country have been disabled people.  

Disgracefully, this government has further eroded the rights and protections of disabled people in the recent Coronavirus Act.

The argument that this is all unavoidable and that we must return to normal activity is false.  

There is no trade-off between protecting people and protecting jobs. The governments that “prioritised the economy,” such as the Tories here and the US and Brazilian governments, have all seen enormous job losses.  

The way to protect lives is the same way to protect jobs — the virus must be crushed.

Instead, this government is callously using the terrible economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic to allow a huge attack on working people.  

These include hundreds of thousands of job losses, cuts in pay or involuntary cuts in hours for many of those in work, the firing and rehiring on worse terms by many employers, as well as a growth in zero-hours contracts and forced temporary employment.

One newspaper report suggests that the government is secretly preparing for four million unemployed.  

It could instead use all its powers to halt and even reverse all these attacks, through legislation, enforcing existing laws, removal of loans and nationalisations.  

Yet by pushing firms and employees to the cliff edge by ending the furlough scheme, they are effectively condoning and encouraging these attacks. 

The governments of France, Germany and Ireland are all extending their schemes into next year.

By contrast, Boris Johnson and all these Tories have implemented policies that force workers back to work in a pandemic without fully safe conditions.  

They are also refusing to implement long-overdue pay rises, even for essential workers.  

They are ending the ban on evictions and they have forced students back to universities to protect the latter’s finances, even though in many cases there are no physical classes to attend.

Adopting a zero-Covid strategy shows it doesn’t have to be this way. Many countries have worked to effectively defeat the virus, even some that have previously had serious outbreaks.  

Australia, China, New Zealand and Vietnam together have had fewer than 6,000 deaths from the virus in total.  

This is in countries with a combined population of over one-and-a-half billion people.  

Crucially, in total they also have fewer than 300 new cases in the latest week. Because they also have highly effective system for tracing, tracking and isolation, this low level of new cases can be contained and suppressed. This is the zero-Covid strategy in action.

The contrast with the Tory government’s catastrophic mishandling of the crisis here could not be more stark. 

With a tiny fraction of the population of these western Pacific nations, this government has presided over an official total of more than 40,000 deaths.  

The rate of new cases is now well over 40,000 a week. Hospitalisations and deaths are also rising. 

Disastrously, there is still no properly effective system of tracing, tracking and isolation. This is the opposite of a zero-Covid approach and it is disastrous.

The situation has become so grim that sections of the press have turned on Johnson.  

But we cannot allow them, once again, to replace one failed leader with another who went along with every bad decision, every U-turn and every cover-up.  

Replacing Johnson with Gove or Sunak or Patel or Hunt is not going to remedy this crisis.

Instead, the labour movement must stand up for our people, for workers and the poor, for black and Asian people, for the disabled and for our young people.  

We demand public health is put first. We demand an end to austerity, and to using the pandemic as a cover.  

Lives and jobs must be protected. We need a zero-Covid approach.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and served as shadow home secretary from 2016 to 2020.