UK premier’s 'Stay Alert' slogan draws criticism

By Karim El-Bar

LONDON (AA) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will replace the “stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives” slogan with a new one “stay alert, control the virus, and save lives” on Sunday night.

In a Twitter post on Sunday, Johnson listed the five ways people could “stay alert”: Stay at home as much as possible, work from home if you can, limit contact with other people, keep your distance if you go out (2 meters apart where possible), and wash your hands regularly.

If a person or anyone in their household has symptoms, they must all self-isolate.

The Department of Health tweeted on Sunday : “As of 9am 10 May, there have been 1,821,280 tests, with 92,837 tests on 09 May. 1,334,770 people have been tested of which 219,183 tested positive.

The death toll in the country rose to 31,855 Sunday evening, as 269 more patients died over the past 24 hours.

- Still ‘Stay Home’

The change in the slogan drew widespread criticism, not least from Scotland’s First Minister who said Scotland would stick with the previous slogan “given the critical point we are at.”

Critics say it will confuse the public as to whether the lockdown is over or not. The devolved administrations were not given prior notification of the change.

Sturgeon tweeted: “The Sunday papers is the first I've seen of the PM's new slogan. It is of course for him to decide what's most appropriate for England, but given the critical point we are at in tackling the virus, #StayHomeSaveLives remains my clear message to Scotland at this stage.”

“STAY HOME. PROTECT THE NHS. SAVE LIVES.,” she added in a follow-up tweet.

At her daily news briefing, Sturgeon said the rate of transmission is still too high to lift the lockdown and Scots must stay at home.

She did announce some loosening of restrictions however, with people allowed to exercise more than once a day, but warned this was not an excuse to meet in groups and Scots still had to stay “relatively close to their own home.” She also asked Scots to wear face masks in shops.

“Except for the essential reasons outlined, the guidance remains to stay at home in Scotland,” she said. “I think there is a risk of people dying unnecessarily in Scotland if we drop the stay at home message.”

“I don’t know what ‘stay alert’ means,” Sturgeon added.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster also rejected the new slogan; Wales was not consulted either.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, from the main opposition Labour Party, said on Twitter: “Feels to me like a mistake to me to drop the clear #StayAtHome message at this particular moment.”

- Growing dissatisfaction

On Saturday, a poll for the Observer newspaper carried out by Opinium found that Brits believe their country is handling the pandemic worse than every country except the US.

The poll found Brits believing France, Italy, and Spain – the countries hit hard by the coronavirus – have handled it better than the UK, and not just Germany and South Korea that have widely been praised for their responses.

Last week, the Office for National Statistics reported that the UK had the highest death toll in Europe.

A new poll for the Observer newspaper carried out by Opinium found that only 52% of Brits would download the new National Health Service contact tracing app, despite experts saying it needed at least 60% of the population to download it for the app to be successful.

The app ran into further trouble when local media reported it might not work with Apple and Google phones, as the US tech companies have said they will not allow the kind of centralized information gathering the UK government app is built on.

Earlier in the day, the Doctors Association UK (DAUK) announced that they were taking legal action to force the government to conduct an independent inquiry into failures to provide adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) to NHS staff.

“It is a tragedy that nearly 200 healthcare workers in the UK have died due to Covid-19. We had a pandemic stockpile of PPE lacking essential items like full gowns and eye protection; other equipment was out of date. There has been recurrent and systemic failure of the PPE supply chain, leaving staff in some instances with makeshift or no PPE,” a spokesman for DAUK said.

“Our action will bring an urgent public inquiry to ensure that lessons are learned, and that families are heard. We need to ensure that no doctor, nurse or healthcare worker is put in harm’s way in this manner ever again, and the families of frontline healthcare workers who have died get much-needed answers.”

After originating in China last December, the virus has spread to at least 187 countries and regions. Europe and the US are currently the worst-hit regions.

More than 4.05 million cases have been reported worldwide, with the death toll nearly 280,000 and recoveries exceeding 1.38 million, according to figures compiled by the US' Johns Hopkins University.