Keeping time on killer virus
Migrants in despair as the Calais people-smuggling gangs cash in
A TEENAGE inventor has designed a watch to warn users not to touch their faces.
Max Melia, 15, from Bristol, came up with Vybpro, as a tool to prevent colds and flus.
But he said when his parents contracted Covid-19 “I truly appreciated just what we were dealing with”. we haven’t been able to put out” and could get even worse.
He added that migrant crossings are “lucrative business” for crime gangs.
Mr Smith said: “The problem is we haven’t been able to stop them and the smuggling gangs have realised it’s not as difficult to get across the Channel as they thought it would be.
“There’s a lot of people in France that really want to come over to the UK who are prepared to pay them.”
The Mirror found evidence of this early yesterday morning on a remote beach near Calais. We discovered a caravan and three shacks hidden in the dunes being used by the smugglers.
In the caravan were large pieces of cardboard to sleep on. On the floor were a man’s four passport photos, obviously mistakenly left behind before he left.
There were footprints in the nearby sand. It looked like three men and a woman had clambered aboard whatever vessel had been there to take them across the water.
I was stopped by three police officers in an unmarked car at 5.30am. Initially I thought they were gang members so I jammed down the accelerator to get away.
But I suddenly noticed the gendarme badge on an officer’s arms and stopped. They asked me to open my boot to check if a migrant was hidden inside before allowing me on my way.
In Calais we met Mariam, who fled war-torn Eritrea. She and her two-yearold son live in a tent in a rat-infested
dunes camp on the outskirts of the city. She has no money to pay the gangs.
Mariam added: “I have been here in Calais for six months. It’s dangerous – every day is a real struggle. I don’t know how I am going to get to England but this is my dream for me and my son.
“I escaped the war in Eritrea and went on a long and dangerous journey. It was very frightening in Libya in particular.”
One piece of nearby graffiti says: “See you in UK.” There are huge police patrols along this coastline to try to protect the migrants from the gangs.
Last Tuesday, 166 people were intercepted in the middle of the Channel.
So far this year 2,345 of the asylum seekers are known to have reached the UK – 500 more than in the whole of 2019.
A group were recently stopped in a paddling pool using road signs as oars.
Gerard Barron, of the French RNLI, said: “People-traffickers are completely ruthless. There are many more people being lost at sea than we realise.”
He said it is hard to prove how many are dying because in most cases they are “chopped into pieces by propellers of large ships and nothing of them remains”.