‘Poor kids need food if schools are shut’
To Chancellor
ANTI-poverty groups have urged ministers to set out plans to feed children from hard-up families if Covid-19 shuts schools, blocking access to free meals.
Charities including Sustain, the Food Foundation, Church Action on Poverty, Magic Breakfast, the Soil Association and the Independent Food Aid Network demanded reassurances.
Sustain chief Kath Dalmeny said: “About 1.5 million children are eligible for free school meals due to families on a very low income.
STRUGGLE
“If schools shut to prevent the spread of coronavirus, families will struggle to be able to afford to feed their children at home, and will not be able to stockpile food supplies if they are self-isolating.
“Foodbanks are already at more than full stretch.”
Food Foundation executive director Anna Taylor added: “These children are from the poorest homes in the country.
“Parents and children tell us how much they rely on this meal. Special measures must be put in place to support these children and their families in the event of closures.”
A letter from the group went to Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey and Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick.
The Department for Education said: “Advice from Public Health England continues to be for schools to remain open, unless advised otherwise.”
Teacher Marc, from Rhode Island, in the US, led a school field trip to Italy, France and Spain last month and was admitted to hospital on February 27, five days after he returned home.
A week later he was diagnosed with coronavirus.
He said the illness had hit him “like a hurricane”.
Marc, a school vice principal, said: “You feel like you’re asphyxiating, and you’re panicking because you can’t breathe.
He added that he felt “one inch from death” and remains in intensive care.
He had been under the weather before the trip, but when the group returned on February 22 he felt run down and had stayed off work.
MARC THIBAULT VICTIM OF CORONAVIRUS
AS the coronavirus spreads, one question comes up again and again: how bad is it really?
The severity of the symptoms can vary dramatically, from a mild sniffle to a hellish feeling of suffocation. A World Health Organisation study suggests 6% of us will get critically ill, with lung failure, septic shock and risk of death, 14% will get severe symptoms, with difficulty breathing, and 80% mild symptoms, fever and cough.
Here, eight survivors from around the world tell how it affected them…
Liz caught coronavirus after attending a house party in Seattle where no one was coughing or sneezing but 40% of guests became sick within the next three days.
In an Instagram post on Monday, she described her symptoms: “Headache, fever, severe body aches and joint pain, and severe fatigue.
“I had a fever that spiked the first night to 103 degrees and eventually came down to 100. I felt nauseous one day. Once the fever is gone some were left with nasal congestion, sore throat. Total duration of illness was 10-16 days.
“I was not hospitalised. I didn’t even go to the doctor because I was recovering on my own and felt it was just a nasty flu strain different from the ones I have been protected from with this season’s flu vaccine.”
You are panicking because you just cannot breathe