The Morning Star

WEALTHY areas are seeing bigger falls in Covid-19 infections following vaccine distribution compared with poorer, working-class areas, research by Labour found today. The party said that people in poorer areas cannot afford to self-isolate to protect themselves from infection and called for more government financial help. Labour’s research analysed government data showing the rate at which infections were decreasing in poor and wealthy areas by parliamentary constituency. It looked at three mainly working-class areas: Preston in Lancashire, Bradford West in West Yorkshire, and Rotherham in South Yorkshire. The analysis covers the fall in infection rates during the last three weeks of January. In Preston, the infection rate fell by 9 per cent, in Bradford West by 14 per cent, and in Rotherham by 18 per cent. But in better-off areas the decline was far steeper. In Oxford West and Abingdon constituency, cases declined by 72 per cent, in Saffron Walden, Essex, by 72 per cent, and in Surrey Heath by 70 per cent. Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth blamed lack of financial support for low-income families who could not afford to self-isolate. “Without decent financial help, transmission chains won’t be broken in these areas. People will remain at risk of illness while Boris Johnson’s promise to ‘level up’ lies in tatters,” he said Greater Manchester Labour Mayor Andy Burnham has called for greater quantities of the vaccine to be sent to poorer areas because that is where unemployed workers and others at high risk, such as supermarket staff and bus drivers, live. Mr Burnham said distribution of the vaccine “has to be a judgement based on health.” He said: “The life expectancy rate varies widely across the UK. “There are places where life expectancy is 10 years behind the areas where it is highest.” He said areas with the lowest life expectancy tended to have high unemployment or have people working in jobs such as “essential retail and supermarkets, or driving buses or driving taxis.” “So clearly they are at greater risk,” he said. “What I am saying is put greater supplies of the vaccine into those areas where life expectancy is lowest.”