Estimated 12% Of UK Immigration Staff Had COVID-19 Symptoms Between Jan-Apr - Reports

Estimated 12% of UK Immigration Staff Had COVID-19 Symptoms Between Jan-Apr - Reports

An estimated 12 percent of the United Kingdom's immigration staff took sick leave between January and April due to COVID-19 symptoms, The Guardian reported, citing figures provided by the minister for immigration compliance in an answer to a parliamentary inquiry

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th May, 2020) An estimated 12 percent of the United Kingdom's immigration staff took sick leave between January and April due to COVID-19 symptoms, The Guardian reported, citing figures provided by the minister for immigration compliance in an answer to a parliamentary inquiry.

According to this data, nearly 1,880 immigration staff, including those working at the country's ports and airports, had a period of sickness absence over coronavirus-like symptoms between January 1 and April 29. The newspaper estimates that it is 12 percent of employees of Border Force and UK Visas and Immigration.

Of these, 1045 people, or 7 percent of the combined workforce, were off before March 23, when the UK was put on lockdown.

In a comment to The Guardian, Labour lawmaker Stephen Doughty who asked this information from the minister described the figures as "shocking revelation."

"[It] shows one of the likely impacts of failing to introduce proper measures to protect staff at the border when they were most needed - in the first quarter of the year - when over 23 million British and other travellers entered the UK without proper health checks or formal quarantine," he said.

Citing the government's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance as saying that there was "a big influx" of COVID-19 cases from Italy and Spain in early March, the lawmaker suggested that "many frontline staff may have been exposed and infected in the course of their work."

According to The Guardian, at least two Border Force staff have died after contracting coronavirus.