Minister under fire for ‘shameful’ virus spread as staff told to work on with more than 500 cases at agency in Swansea
Ministers are at the centre of an explosive row over their failure to protect workers from Covid-19 as the Observer reveals the largest workplace outbreak of the virus has taken place at a top government organisation.
More than 500 cases have been recorded at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s offices in Swansea, where employees claim people with symptoms were encouraged to return to work while vulnerable workers have had requests to work from home turned down.
The revelation places the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, under pressure to explain how such an outbreak could have happened in an agency where the strictest workplace rules are supposed to apply.
A complaint received by Public Health Wales’s outbreak control team claims DVLA workers were asked to turn off their test-and-trace apps “so that their phones do not ping”.
It also says absences relating to Covid have been counted against workers’ sick leave, with anything over 10 days triggering a warning.
About 1,800 staff are being asked to come into the DVLA to process driving licence applications and vehicle tax renewals, even though there have been 535 Covid cases since September – by far the most infections linked to a single employer in a local area. …
Copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, with a satirical macaronic poem (‘Vos Creditis, als eine Fabel, / quod scribitur vom Doctor Schnabel’) in octosyllabic rhyming couplets. Date - after 1656
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This palette commemorates the victories of King Narmer, who came from Upper Egypt to invade the Nile Delta in about 3200-3000 BC.
It represents the most important evidence that the first political unification in the history of mankind occurred in Egypt.
The Narmer Palette was discovered at the Hierakonpolis excavation site in 1897-98 by British archaeologist, James Edward Quibell, along with Frederick W. Green. It was discovered at the Temple of Horus in the ancient capital of the Upper Kingdom, Hierakonpolis.
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“Copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, with a satirical macaronic poem (‘Vos Creditis, als eine Fabel, / quod scribitur vom Doctor Schnabel’) in octosyllabic rhyming couplets....](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b11b227c0f794f91fdffcbbbb53c3fd0/62bdf34b3a62ace1-2d/s500x750/7e659f90eda2e3dc3fa657e48ccbc54be1e8e057.png)
